
I 



THE GREAT MASTERS 

OF 

RUSSIAN LITERATURE 

IN 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

BY 

ERNEST DUPUY 

TRANSLATED BY 
NATHAN HASKELL DOLE 

THE PROSE WRITERS 



Nikolai Vasilyevitch Gogol, Ivan Sergeyevitch Turgenief, 
Count Lyof Nikolayevitch Tolstoi 



WITH APPENDIX 

V± i 

NEW YORK 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

13 Astor Place 









20l^ 



C^ 






Copyright, 1886, 
By THOMAS V. CROWELL & CO. 



/Z-3/f</ 



I) PRINTKD 

COMPANY, 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

GOGOL 5 

TURGENIEF 117 

TOLSTOI 215 

APPENDIX 339 

INDEX . . . . . . . ,441 



It may be said, that the emancipation of lit- 
erature in Russia dates back scarcely fifty years. 
All the Russian writers, whether of poetry or 
prose, with the exception possibly of one or two 
satirists, were little more than imitators. Some 
of the most valued authors during the first half 
of this century, Zhukovsky for example, owed 
all their fame to translations. Pushkin himself, 
who, on the recommendation of Merimee, has 
for some time been admired in France, did not 
venture far from the Byronic manner. He died, 
to be sure, just at the moment when he had 
found his path. He suspected the profit that 
could be made from national sources ; he had 
a presentiment that a truly Russian literature 
was about to burst into bloom ; he aided in its 
production. His greatest originality lies in his 
having predicted, preached, perhaps prepared 
or inspired Gogol. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 



Nikolai Gogol 1 was born in 1810, in a vil- 
lage of the government of Poltava. His father, 
a small proprietor with some education, obtained 
for him a scholarship in the college of Niezhin. 
Fortunately the young Gogol was able to hold 
his own in rebellion against the direction of his 
instructors, and neither the dead nor the living 
languages brought him any gain. He thus 
failed of becoming a commonplace man of let- 
ters, and consequently had less trouble in the 
end with discovering his original genius. 

In his father's house, on the other hand, he 

1 Nikolai Vasilyevitch Gogol-Yanovsky, born, according to Polevoi, 
on the 31st of March, 1809, at Sorotchintsui. See Appendix. 

5 



6 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

received a priceless education, such as Push- 
kin, in spite of all his efforts, vainly attempted 
to obtain. He was imbued with the poetry 
of the people. His childhood was entertained 
by the marvellous legends of the Malo-Russians. 
Gogol's grandfather was one of those Zaparog 
Cossacks whose heroic exploits the author of 
"Taras Bulba" was destined to celebrate. He 
excelled in the art of story-telling, and his 
narrations had a tinge of mystery about them 
that brought the cold chills. " When he was 
speaking I would not move from my place all 
day long, but would listen, . . . and the things 
were so strange that I always shivered, and my 
hair stood on end. Sometimes I was so fright- 
ened by them, that at night every thing seemed 
like God knows what monsters.' , This fund of 
mainly fantastic and diabolical legends after- 
wards furnished the grandson of the Ukraine 
village story-teller, with the material for his 
first original work. 1 

Gogol's first attempts were not original : he 
began too early. Scarcely out of the gymna- 
sium, he began to write in rhyme ; in the morn- 

1 Evenings at the Farm House (Vetchera na Khuto/yc). 






NIKOLAI GOGOL. 7 

ing trying all the styles in vogue, at evening 
making parodies upon them. He established 
a manuscript journal "The Star" (Zvyezd). 
The student intoxicated by reading Pushkin 
still remained in the trammels of uninspired 
verse, in the formulas of romanticism. Some 
characteristics already began to reveal the pre- 
cocious observer, the brilliant satirist. Thus 
his prose articles, clandestinely introduced, had 
a tremendous success never equalled in fiis 
ripest years, even by his comedy of "The 
Revizor? 

After his studies were ended, Gogol was 
obliged to conquer the favor of a public less 
complacent than the rhetoricians and philoso- 
phers of Niezhin. He obtained (1830) an 
exceedingly modest office in the Ministry of 
Appanages (Udyelui). But in the bureau, 
where, like Popritshchin in the " Recollections 
of a Lunatic" his service was limited to sharp- 
ening dozens of pens for the director, he worked 
out a comedy on the pattern of Scribe's, and 
spun a cottony idyl in the German style. The 
comedy was hissed by the public, and the idyl 
was so unkindly received by the critics that 



8 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

Gogol had this attempt withdrawn from the 
market. ■ 

Gogol almost simultaneously shook off the 
double yoke olsh iirea ucratic slavery and literary 
imitation. Instead of following, like so many 
others, in the track of French, English, or Ger- 
man writers, he determined to be himself. He 
w r ent back over the course of his early years to 
find in this way in all their freshness the im- 
pressions of his childhood ; he returned to his 
first, his real masters, and began once more to 
get material around the Malo-Russian hearth. 
He appealed to his mother for recollections ; he 
besought the aid of his friends ; he put them 
like so many bloodhounds on the track of half- 
forgotten legends, half-vanished traditions ; he 
collected documents of every sort and kind: and 
when he was sufficiently permeated with sav- 
agery to think and speak, if need were, like a 
Cossack of the last century, he created a work 
at once modern and archaic, learned and enthu- 
siastic, mystic and refined, — Russian, in a 

1 Hans Kiichel Garten — such was the name of the unfortunate 
idyl — was afterwards placed by the author, not without complai- 
sance, among his juvenilia. See Appendix. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 9 

word, — and published it under the title "Even- 
ings at the Farm" (Vetchera na Kliutorye bliz 
Dikanki). 

This series of fantastic tales, published in the 
reviews under the pseudonyme of Rudui Panko 
(Sandy the little nobleman), produced a singular 
effect. The Russian reader was surprised and 
charmed in the same way as a French traveller, 
who, after having visited all the countries and 
admired all the floras of the world, should dis- 
cover the banks of the Seine, and declare that 
he was willing to exchange the splendors of the 
savannas for a tuft of turf and a bunch of 
violets. No one was more struck with the 
value of these tales than Pushkin. He recom- 
mended their author to Pletnef, minister of 
public instruction ; and Gogol was appointed 
professor. The servitude was still more oner- 
ous than that of the bureaucracy. The young 
writer had too much originality to bend under 
it very long: a second time he escaped, and 
took his departure for the Ukra'ina. 

The Zaparog Cossack's grandson used to say 
that there was material for an Iliad in the 
exploits of his ancestors. He buried himself in 



IO NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

the study of the annals of Little Russia; he 
collected the traditions ; more than all, he picked 
up the national songs of the Ukraina, — those 
kinds of heroic cantilenas composed by the 
players of the bandura. A modern diaskenastes> 
he constructed a body out of all these poetic 
remains, joined them together by means of a 
romantic plot, and renewed the astonishment 
caused by the appearance of " Evenings at the 
Farm," by publishing "Taras Bulba." The 
minister was convinced that a man who could 
thus revivify history could not fail to be skilled 
in teaching it : he therefore offered Gogol the 
chair of mediaeval history in the University of 
Petersburg. The romancer gave only one lec- 
ture, his opening lecture. This day he dazzled 
his audience. The remainder of his course was 
for both students and professor only a long- 
continued bore, which ended finally in his losing 
the place. 

Gogol dreamed of a different success. In 
1835 he published his comedy, "The Revizor" 
(The Inspector General). It was applauded, 
and, what was of more value, it was desperately 
attacked. The author gained as many admirers 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. II 

and enemies as "Tartuffe" cost Moliere. At 
Petersburg, as at Paris, the masterpiece was 
produced on the stage, and kept before the 
public, only by a fortunate caprice on the part 
of the sovereign. 

Gogol's health, which had long been failing, 
caused him about this period to -leave Russia. 
He lived many years in Italy. There he com- 
pleted his great romance, " Dead Souls " {Mert- 
vitia DiLshi). The work appeared in complete 
form in 1841. 1 The author had reached a state 
of nervous irritation and hypochondria, which 
was more and more manifested in his corre- 
spondence, published in part towards 1846. The 
last years of Gogol's life were only a long tor- 
ture. A sort of mystic madness took possession 
of his brain, exhausted or over-excited by pro- 
duction : death put an end to his nervous dis- 
ease (1852). 

1 This is a mistake. He completed it, to be sure, but in his religious 
mania he destroyed the most of the second part : it was completed by 
another hand. See Appendix. 



12 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 



II. 

Dreaminess and banter are the two natural 
tendencies, the two favorite pleasures, of the 
Russian mind. They are also the two ele- 
ments of Gogol's talent. At the beginning of 
his career as a writer, and during the sprightly 
years of his youth, it is dreaminess which pre- 
vails : the narrator penetrates with enthusiasm 
into the untrodden paths of the Malo-Russian 
legends. On the track of witches, of Rusal- 
kas, he finds the unpublished poetry of the 
forests, the ponds, the wide stretches, and the 
sky of the steppes. These lovely days pass. 
With age, this restless spirit grows gloomy and 
melancholy. The observer's eyes turn from 
the pacifying spectacle of nature, and attempt 
only to notice the vexing absurdities of hu- 
manity. 

The satirical spirit in Gogol is first expressed 
in verse. He is poetical only in prose ; but his 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 13 

prose is equal to the most beautiful verse. In 
truth, poetry is not rhyme, or metre, or even 
rhythm : it is the power of touching, of record- 
ing its impressions in vivid and genuine im- 
ages. To feel emotion suitable for poetic 
expression, there is no need of picturing lofty 
heroes, or of spreading marvellous landscapes 
before the eyes. Properly speaking, a Malo- 
Russian peasant is like a hero in Corneille ; 
and the imagination of an author, and therefore 
of his reader, can just as well be stirred by the 
view of a bit of the flat and naked steppe, as 
by the sight of the Bay of Naples or a sunset 
on the ruins of the Coliseum. 

Gogol understood this, and, what is far bet- 
ter, made it understood. Instead of preparing 
his imitation of Werther and his copy of Childe 
Harold in the fashion of so many others, he 
had the courage to go to Nature for his models. 
And in this Russian nature, the wild grace and 
strange flavor of which he was, so to speak, the 
first to feel, that which attracts him more than 
all else is its unostentatious aspect. His field 
of observation is the village. His heroes are 
unimportant people, half - barbarous peasants, 



14 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

true Cossack lads, hard drinkers, with circum- 
scribed intellectual training, with superstitious 
imaginations ; in a word, very simple souls, 
whose artless passions are shown without any 
veil, but whose very ingenuousness is a deli- 
riously restful contrast to our romantic or the- 
atrical characters, so artificial in their labored 
mechanism, so insipid and perfunctory in the 
refinements of their conventionality. 

Gogol places his characters in their natural 
surroundings. It is the hamlet bordering on 
the steppe, monotonous and infinite, deserted 
and mysterious. All this country appeals to 
the writer's imagination, as well as to that of 
those Malo-Russians, whose history, past and 
present, he will describe for us in turn. Each 
shrub inshrines a memory ; each winding val- 
ley veils a legend. In yonder stretch of water, 
beset with rushes and starred with nenuphars, 
the sceptic traveller in his indifference sees 
only a sort of marsh. The peasant who is 
here a poet, and the poet who remembers that 
he was once a peasant, know well who the Ru- 
salka is who has been hiding there these many 
years. From its surface, on nights when the 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 1 5 

moon lights up the silvery mist, the queen of 
the drowned comes forth with her train of vir- 
gins, to find and drag into the depths of the 
water her stepmother, the witch whose evil 
deeds drove her to suicide. 

But to move those whom she has brought 
forth, this land of the Ukrai'na has no need of 
being wrapped in mystery. Gogol has only to 
pronounce th.e name of the Dniepr to arouse a 
sort of passionate woe, whose expression, un- 
happily almost untranslatable, equals in beauty 
the accents of the noblest poetry. 

'"Marvellous is the Dniepr in peaceful weath- 
er, when he rolls his wide waters in a free 
and reposeful course by forests and mountains. 
Not the slightest jar, not the slightest tumult. 
Thou beholdest, and thou canst not tell if his 
majestic breadth is moving or is stationary. 
It is almost like a sheet of molten glass. It 
might be compared to a road of blue ice, with- 
out measure in its breadth, without limit to its 
length, describing its wondrous curves in the 
emerald distance. How delightful for the burn- 
ing sun to turn his gaze to earth, and to plunge 
his rays into the refreshing coolness of the 

1 From A Terrible Vengeance. 



1 6 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

glassy waves, and for the trees along the bank 
to see their reflections in this crystal mirror ! 
Oh the green-crowned trees ! They stand in 
groups with the flowers of the field by the 
water-side, and they bend over and gaze, and 
cannot weary of gazing. They cannot suffi- 
ciently admire their bright reflection, and they 
smile back to it, and greet it, waving their 
branches. They dare not look towards the 
middle of the Dniepr : none but the sun and 
the azure sky gaze at it. Some daring bird 
occasionally wings his way to the middle of the 
Dniepr. Oh the giant that he is ! There is 
not a river like him in the world ! 

''Marvellous indeed is the Dniepr on a warm 
summer's night, when all things are asleep, — 
both man and beast and bird. God only from 
on high looks down majestically on sky and 
earth, and shakes with solemnity his chasuble, 
and from his priestly raiment scatters all the 
stars. The stars are kindled, they shine upon 
the world ; and all at the same instant also flash 
forth from the Dniepr. He holds them every 
one, the Dniepr, in his sombre bosom ; not one 
shall escape from him, unless, indeed, it perish 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. lj 

from the sky. The black forest, dotted with 
sleeping crows, and the mountains rent from 
immemorial time, strive, as they catch the light, 
to veil him with their mighty shadow. In vain ! 
There is naught on earth can veil the Dniepr ! 
Forever blue, he marches onward in his restful 
course by day and night. He can be seen as 
far as human sight can pierce. As he goes to 
rest voluptuously, and presses close unto the 
shore by reason of the nocturnal cold, he leaves 
behind him a silver trail, flashing like the blade 
of a Damascus sword, and then he yields to 
sleep again. Then also he is wonderful, the 
Dniepr, and there is no river like him in the 
world ! 

" But when the black clouds advance like 
mountains on the sky, the gloomy forest sways, 
the oaks clash, and the lightning, darting zigzag 
across the cloud, lights up suddenly the whole 
world, terrible then the Dniepr is ! The col- 
umns of water thunder down, dashing against 
the mountain, and then with shouts and groans 
draw far away, and weep, and break out into 
tears again in the distance. Thus some aged 
Cossack mother consumes away with grief, 



lb NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

when she gets ready her son to take his depart- 
ure for the army. With many airs, a genuine 
good-for-naught, he dashes up on his black 
steed, his hand on his hip, and his cap set jaun- 
tily awry ; and she, weeping at the top of her 
voice, runs after him, seizes him by the stirrup, 
strives to grasp the reins, and twists her arms, 
and breaks into a passion of scalding tears. 
Like dark stains in the midst of the struggling 
waves, emerge uncannily the stumps of charred 
trees and the rocks on the shelving shore. 
And the boats moored along the shore knock 
against each other as they rise and fall. What 
Cossack would dare embark in his canoe when 
the ancient Dniepr is angry ? Apparently yon- 
der man knows not that his waves swallow men 
like flies. ,, 

The same powerful and charming feeling is 
found in all the descriptions which are scattered 
throughout Gogol's work. One must read in 
"Taras Bulba" the celebrated description of 
the beauty of the steppe at different hours of 
the day. What a picture it is of this ocean 
of gilded verdure, where, amid the delicate dry 
stalks of the tall grass, shine patches of corn- 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 1 9 

flower with their shades of blue, of violet, or of 
red ; the broom with its pyramid of yellow 
flowers ; the clover with its white tufts ; and in 
this luxuriant flora a corn-stalk, brought thither 
God knows how, lifting itself with the haughty 
vigor of a solitary fruit ! The warm atmos- 
phere is vocal with the cries of unseen birds. 
A few hawks are seen hovering ; a flock of wild 
geese sweep by, and the prairie-gull mounts 
and swoops down again, now black and glisten- 
ing in the sunbeam. Then it is the evening 
twilight, with its vapors descending denser and 
more dense, its perfumes rising more and more 
penetrating; the jerboas creep out from their 
hiding-places ; the crickets madly chirp in their 
holes ; and "one hears resounding, like a vibrat- 
ing bell in the sleepy air, the cry of the solitary 
swan winging its way from some distant lake." 1 

1 The passage referred to is as follows : " The steppe grew more 
and more beautiful. The whole South, all the region which includes 
the New Russia of the present day as far as the Black Sea, was a vir- 
gin desert of green. Never had the plough passed through the bound- 
less waves of vegetation. Only a few horses, concealed in it as in a 
forest, trod it under their hoofs. Nothing in nature could be finer. 
All the surface of the earth was like a green golden ocean from which 
emerged millions of varied flowers. Amidst the delicate tall stalks of 
the grass gleamed azure, purple, violet blue-bonnets (voloshki) ; the yel- 



20 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

What gives this picturesque and vivid prose 
a singularly penetrating accent, is the writer's 
emotion. His admiration has a truly passionate 
character, and this passion breaks out in cries 
of joy, even in expletives. "The deuce take 
you, steppes, how beautiful you are ! " There 
is in this a flavor of savagery which takes hold 
of us like a novelty, and which must have been 
as agreeable to the Russian taste as the secretly 
preferable national dish after too long use of 
foreign insipidities. 

And even for many Russians, this nature 
which Gogol studied and described, or, more 
accurately speaking, sang with a sort of intoxi- 

low broom lifted on high its pyramidal tower ; the white clover, with 
its umbrella-like bonnets, mottled the plain ; a wheat-stalk, brought 
from God knows where, was waxing full of seed. Under their slender 
roots the partridges were running about, thrusting out their necks. 
The air was full of a thousand different bird-notes. In the sky hung 
motionless a cloud of hawks, stretching wide their wings and fixing 
their eyes silently on the grass. The cry of the wild geese moving in 
clouds was heard from God knows what distant lake. From the grass 
arose with measured strokes the prairie-gull, and luxuriously bathed 
herself in the blue waves- of the air. Now she was lost in immensity, 
and was visible only as a lone black speck. Now she swept back 
on broad wings, and gleamed in the sun. The deuce take you, 
steppes, how beautiful you are 1 " ( Tchort vas vozmi, styepi, kak vui 
khoroslii ') 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 21 

cation, was a sort of new world offering every 
attraction. Nothing is more peculiar than the 
little Russian landscape with its solitudes, its 
lakes, its vast rivers, the incomparable purity of 
its sky, icy and burning in turn. Here there 
is material to tempt the palette of colorist most 
enamoured of the untouched (epris cCinedit). 
But what painter's palette has colors sufficiently 
powerful to express as Gogol has done the pro- 
found, ineffable poetry of the sounds and gleams 
of the night ? 

1 "Do you know the Ukraine night ? Oh ! you 
do not know the Ukraine night. Gaze upon it 
with your eyes. From the midst of the sky 
the moon looks down. The immense vault of 
heaven unrolls wider and still more wide ; more 
immense it has become; it glows ; it breathes. 
The whole earth is in a silvery effulgence, and 
the marvellous air is both suffocating and fresh. 
It is full of tender caresses. It stirs into move- 
ment an ocean of perfumes. 

"Night divine! enchanting night! silent, and 
as though full of life, the forests rise bristling 
with darkness ; they cast an enormous shadow. 
Silent and motionless are the ponds : the coolness 

1 From The May Night 



22 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

of their darkling waters is gloomily enshrined 
between the dark green walls of the gardens. 

11 The cherry-trees and wild plums stretch 
their roots with cautious timidity towards the 
icy water of the springs ; and from their leaves 
only now and then are heard faint whisperings, 
as though they were angry, as though they were 
indignant, when the gay adventurer, the night 
wind, glides stealthily up to them and kisses 
them. 

"All the landscape sleeps; and far above, 
all is breathing, all is marvellous, all is solemn. 
The soul cannot fathom it : it is sublime. An 
infinite number of silver visions arise like a 
harmony in the depths. Night divine ! enchant- 
ing night! And suddenly all is filled with life, 
— the forests, the ponds, the steppes. Majes- 
tically the thunder of the voice of the Ukraine 
nightingale rolls along; and it seems as though 
the moon drank her song from the bosom of 
the sky. 

"A magic slumber holds the village yonder 
in repose. Still more brilliant in the moonlight 
the group of little houses stands out in relief ; 
still more blinding are their low walls in con- 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 23 

trast with the shade. The songs have ceased; 
all is now still. The pious folk are already 
asleep. Here and there a narrow window 
shows a gleam of light ; on the doorstep of 
some cottage, a belated family are finishing 
their evening meal." 

Gogol excels not only in picturing the grand 
aspects of the Ukraine landscape. He has 
sketches filled in with adorable detail ; and 
nothing is more curious than the contrast 
between the lyricism with which he celebrates 
the seductions of the Malo-Russian sky, and the 
fine, discreet, restrained tone of so many famil- 
iar impressions. The feeling for nature finds 
in Gogol all manner of expression: he passes in 
turn through every gradation. 

Sometimes it is a vigorous sketch made with 
a few strokes, at once broad and accurate, domi- 
nated by a strange and grandiose theme : — 

1 "In places the black sky was colored by the 
burning of dry rushes on the shore of some 
river or out-of-the-way lake; and a long line 
of swans flying to the north, struck suddenly by 
the silver rose-light of the flame, were like red 
handkerchiefs waving across the night." 

1 From Taras Bulba. 



24 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

Sometimes it is a picture full of detail, 
whose motives have been strangely brought 
together and treated delicately, elaborately, as 
with a magnifying-glass : — 

""I see from here the little house, surrounded 
by a gallery supported by delicate, slender 
columns of darkened wood, and going entirely 
around the building, so that during thunder- 
showers or hail -storms the window -shutters 
can be closed without exposure to the rain ; 
behind the house, mulberry-trees in bloom, then 
long rows of dwarf fruit-trees drowned in the 
bright scarlet of the cherries and in an ame- 
thystine sea of plums with leaden down ; then 
a large old beech-tree, under the shade of which 
is spread a carpet for repose ; before the house, 
a spacious court with short and verdant grass, 
with two little foot-paths trodden down by the 
steps of those who went from the barn to the 
kitchen and from the kitchen to the proprie- 
tor's house. A long- necked goose drinking 
water from a puddle, surrounded by her soft 
and silky yellow goslings ; a long hedge hung 
with strings of dried pears and apples, and rugs 
put out to air ; a wagon loaded with melons 

1 From Old-time Proprietors. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 2$ 

near the barn ; on one side an ox unyoked 
and chewing his cud, lazily lying down. All 
this has for me an inexpressible charm. " 

Here we have a realism anterior to our own, 
and, if I may be allowed to say so, far superior. 
Here we do not find, as we do elsewhere, 
features collected and reproduced with the 
conscientiousness — or rather the lack of con- 
scientiousness — of a photographic camera: a 
choice is shown, a soul -felt attention. The 
observer's notice is that of a poet : the external 
world is no longer reflected in a glass lens, but 
is caught by a quivering retina; the image 
which is transferred to the book is no less 
alive, and what the writer has felt in this 
manner the reader feels in turn. 

Just so far as purely descriptive description 
produces an impression of puerility, of unlike- 
ness, and, when it is carried to extremes in the 
style of our realists, of fatigue and disgust, to 
the same degree does it here afford interest, 
picturesqueness, appropriateness. Who could 
fail to see, or who would refuse to admire, the 
pose of " yonder wooden cottages, leaning to 
one side, and buried in a thicket of willows, 



26 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

elders, and pear-trees"? They have something 
better than a physiognomy : they have a 
language. 

" I could not tell why the doors sang in this 
way. Was it because the hinges were rusted? 
Or had the joiner who made them concealed in 
them some secret mechanism ? I do not know ; 
but the strangest thing was, that each door had 
its own individual voice. That of the sleep- 
ing-room had the most delicate soprano, that of 
the dining-room a sonorous bass. As to that 
which closed the ante -room, it gave forth a 
strange, tremulous, and plaintive sound, so that 
by listening attentively these words could be 
distinctly heard: 'Batiushki! I am freezing/ 
I know that many people do not like the 
squeaking of doors : for my part, I like it very 
much. And when I happen to hear in St. 
Petersburg a door crying, I suddenly perceive 
the scent of the country, together with the 
memory of a small, low room, lighted by a 
taper set in an ancient candlestick. Supper is 
already on the table, near the open window 
through which the lovely May night looks into 
the room. A nightingale fills the garden, the 



NIKOLAI GOGOL, 2j 

house, and the slope to the river gleaming 
in the gloomy distance, with the glory of his 
voice; the trees gently rustle. BozJie mot! 
what a train of memories arise within me !" 

We must draw attention to the exclamations 
which in Gogol serve for the passionate conclu- 
sion to his most accurate descriptions. They 
give us the key to his poetic realism. It is 
feeling which stored away the impression in 
the treasure-house of the memory ; it is feeling 
which calls it up again, and places it before 
the reader, kindled with all the fires of the 
imagination. 



28 NIKOLAI GOGOL, 



III. 

This power of resurrection which makes the 
poet a god, Gogol applies equally to facts and 
to ideas, to men and to things, to legends and to 
history. His whole work shows it, but noth- 
ing in his work shows it more clearly than his 
early writings. Here imagination plays the 
leading part. In the works of his riper years, 
it is observation which comes to get the mas- 
tery, forcing itself everywhere. The part played 
by poetry, by fancy, grows less and less. The 
author of "The Revizor? of " Dead Souls, " no 
longer takes pains, except rarely, to distinguish 
by his characteristic touch his models of coarse- 
ness, platitude, or ugliness. 

The writer of the " Evenings at the Farm " 
is still content to vivify or revivify in his half- 
imaginary, half-biographical tales, artless lovers, 
full of passion and pathos, heroes of epic grand- 
eur, good old folks of the vanished past, of odd 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 2() 

exteriors, of ridiculous aspect, but charming by 
their glances, stirring by their smiles, as in the 
pale, faded pastels of a bygone age. Such are 
the figures which Gogol afterwards ceases to de- 
pict for us : it is these which we are going to 
endeavor to take out from his first collection, so 
as to examine them entirely at our ease. 

This collection of "Evenings at the Farm" 
is divided into two parts, bearing, by way of 
sub-title, the town names, Didanka and Mir- 
gorod. 

Each part contains two groups of novels. In 
the "Evenings near Didanka," ' the first group 
contains " The Fair at Sorotchintsui," " St. 
John's Eve," "The May Night, or the Drowned 
Girl," and "The Missing Paper." The second 
group includes "Christmas Eve," "A Terrible 
Vengeance," " Ivan Feodorovitch Shponka and 
his Aunt," and "An Enchanted Spot." 

The "Evenings near Mirgorod " contain four 
novels in two groups: in the one, "Old-time 
Proprietors" 2 and "Taras Bulba" (in its first 
form ; shortly afterwards the author recast it 

1 Vetchera na Khutoi-yc bliz Dikcuiki. 
z Starosiyctskie Ponycshchiki, 



3° NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

and developed it) ; in the other, "Vii'," which 
has been translated into French under the title 
"The King of the Gnomes," and "The Story of 
how Ivan Ivanovitch and Ivan Nikiforovitch 
quarrelled." J 

The novels of the first part have especially a 
fantastic character. The Devil, who holds such 
a place in the imagination of the Malo-Russian 
peasants, is the principal hero of some of the 
stories, " The Fair at Sorotchintsui " for exam- 
ple. Witches also play a preponderating part in 
his mysterious tales. But here the witch is not 
that wrinkled, toothless, unclean being, hiding 
herself like an abominable beast in some, ill- 
omened hovel. She is generally a beautiful 
girl, with eyes green as an Undine's, with skin 
of lily and rose, with long hair yellow as gold 
or black as ebony, with delicate level, haughty 
eye-brows. Sometimes, as in "Yi'f,"it is the 
proprietor's daughter, and those who are impu- 
dent enough to stare at her are lost: witness 
the groom Mikita. 

This groom had no equal in the world. En- 

1 Povycst o Tom Kak Possorilis Ivan Ivanovitch s. Ivanom Xiki- 
forovitcJicm. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 3 1 

chanted by the maiden, he becomes a little 
woman, a rag, the deuce knows what. Did she 
look at him ? The reins fell from his hand. 
He forgot the names of his dogs, and called one 
instead of the other. One day, while he was 
grooming a horse at the stable, the maiden 
came and asked him to let her rest her little 
foot upon him. He accepted with joy, foolish 
fellow ! but she compelled him to gallop like a 
horse, and struck him redoubled blows with her 
witch's stick. He came back half dead, and 
from that day he vanished from mortal sight. 
" Once when they went to the stable, they 
found instead of him only a handful of ashes by 
an empty pail. He had burned up, — entirely 
burned up by his own fire. Yet he had been a 
groom such as no more can be found in the 
world." 

Artless but not silly sorcery. It is the timid 
homage, pathetic from its very timidity, which 
is offered by these barbarous souls to the eter- 
nal power of beauty and love. 

These witches of Gogol, so bold and. novel in 
their conception, put me in mind of a painting 
of the Spanish school, attributed to Murillo. 



32 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

This canvas, which I saw several years ago in 
a private gallery, is a Temptation of St. An- 
thony, interpreted in an unlooked-for way. A 
young man of thirty years, whose features are 
those of the painter himself, with sunburned 
face and passionate eyes, bends towards his 
mistress, a lovely girl with piquant charm, sal y 
pimienta, who is leaning on his shoulder, while 
her mouth is arched at the corners of the lips 
in a smile of irresistible seduction. 

In these tales of Gogol, the marvellous 
abounds. But it abounds equally in the life of 
these Malo-Russians whom the author has 
wished to depict for us. The supernatural 
affrights and charms them. If the legends of 
the Ukrai'na are lugubrious, yet they never 
weary of hearing them told. The young girl 
who at the first sound of the serenade lifts the 
latch, steals out from the door, and joins the 
love-stricken bandiira-^X^y^x^ desires no other 
entertainment on the border of the pond which 
in the uncanny lights of the night reflects in 
its waters the willows and the maples : l "Tell 
me it, my handsome Cossack," she says, laying 
her cheek to his face and kissing him : " No ? 

1 From The May Night. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 33 

Then it is plain that thou dost not love me, 
that thou hast some other young girl. Speak ! 
I shall not be afraid. My sleep will not be 
broken by it. On the contrary, I shall not be 
able to go to sleep at all if thou dost not tell 
me this story. I shall be thinking of something 
else. I shall believe — come, Lyevko, tell it." 
They are right who say that the Devil haunts 
the brain of young girls to keep their curiosity 
awake. 

Lyevko, however, yields, and unfolds the old 
legend. It is the story of the daughter of the 
sotnik (captain of a hundred Cossacks). The 
sotnik had a daughter white as snow. He was 
old, and one day he brought home a second 
wife, young and handsome, white and rose ; 
but she looked at her stepdaughter in such 
a strange way that she cried out under her 
gaze. The young wife was a witch, as was 
seen immediately. The very night of the wed- 
ding, a black cat enters the young girl's room, 
and tries to choke her with his iron claws. 
She snatches a sabre down from the wall, she 
strikes at the animal, and cuts off his paw. 
He disappears with a yell. When the step- 



34 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

mother was seen again, her hand was covered 
with bandages. Five days later the father drove 
his daughter from the house, and in grief 
she drowned herself in the pond. Since then 
the drowned girl has been waiting for the 
sorceress, to beat her with the green rushes 
of the pond ; but up to the present time the 
stepmother has succeeded in escaping from all 
her traps. ( She is very wily/ says the poor 
Undine. ' I feel that she is here. I suffer 
from her presence. Because of her, I cannot 
swim freely like a fish. I go to the bottom 
like a key. Find her for me." 

Lyevko the singer hears the drowned girl 
thus speaking to him in a dream. But this 
dream is a reality ; for when he wakes, Lyevko, 
who has tracked and caught the stepmother in 
the circle of the young shadows, finds in his 
hand the reward of the Queen of the Lake. 
It is a letter containing an order for the mar- 
riage between Lyevko and Hanna, his fiancee. 
The order is given by the district commis- 
sioner, to Hanna's father, who has hitherto 
shown himself recalcitrant. " I shall not tell 
any one the miracle which has been performed 



NIKOLAI GOGOL, 35 

this night," murmurs the happy bridegroom. 
"To thee alone will I confide it, Hanna ; thou 
alone wilt believe me, and together we will pray 
for the soul of the poor drowned girl." 



3 6 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 



IV. 

In this collection of "Evenings at the Farm" 
figures the heroic story of a great character, the 
life of the ataman Taras Bulba. Gogol after- 
wards turned this epopee into prose, but the 
after-touches did not change the character of 
the early composition. The hero of " Taras 
Bulba M is one of those Zaporog Cossacks who 
played such an important part in the history 
of Poland, and later in the history of Russia. 
After the beginning of the sixteenth century, 
the Zaporozhtsui, who formed a military repub- 
lic, or, if the term is preferred, an association 
of cavalry bandits, became the terror of the 
neighboring peoples. They had on an island 
in the Dniepr a permanent camp, the Setch, 
where, even in times of peace, young Cossacks 
came to perfect themselves in the noble game 
of war. Women were rigorously excluded from 
the SctcJi. The men were quartered in divis- 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 37 

ions, or kurenui ; each kuren had its chief, an 
ataman (hetman) ; the entire camp was com- 
manded by a supreme chief, the atamdn-kotche- 
voi. 

The romance of "Taras Bulba" opens in 
the most original fashion. 1 The two sons of the 
Cossack Taras are just back from the divinity 
school, to which they will not return. The 
father, a vigorous Zaporozhets, who has grown 
gray in harness, receives them with sarcastic 
observations about their long robes. It is a 
sort of test like that which Don Diego gives 
his sons in the "Romancero." The eldest of 
Bulba's sons, Ostap (Eustace), behaves like 
Rodriguez. "Though thou art my father, I 
swear to thee, if thou continuest to laugh at 
me, I will give thee a drubbing." 

After an exchange of well-directed blows on 
either side, Taras kisses effusively his son 
whose courage and strength he has just expe- 
rienced; he rudely rallies Andril (Andrew), the 
younger, on his gentleness : " Thou art a puppy 
so far as I can judge. Don't listen to thy 
mother's words : she is a woman ; she knows 

1 For a translation of this portion, see Appendix. 



3 8 NIKOLA'/ GOGOL. 

naught. What need have ye of being coddled ? 
A good prairie, a good horse, that's all the 
delicacies that ye need. See this sabre : behold 
your mother, lads ! " 

The poor woman is not at the end of her 
trials. Taras announces his immediate depart- 
ure with his sons : she protests amid tears and 
lamentations ; the Cossack ill-uses her, and 
cuts short her complaints. The two sons 
spend in their father's house just time enough 
to give the narrator a chance to describe this 
interior so characteristic and brilliantly colored. 
On the wall hang all the exquisite ornaments in 
which barbarous man delights, — sabres, whips, 
inlaid arms, reins worked in gold wire, silver- 
nailed clogs. On the dressers are the products 
of civilization brought from different corners 
of the world, — masterpieces of Florentine en- 
gravers, of Venetian glass-blowers, of Oriental 
goldsmiths ; and in contrast with all this treas- 
ure, the fruit of pillage, piles of wood, the 
stove made of the enamelled bricks loved by 
the Ukraine peasant, and the " holy images " in 
hieratic posture, these Lares indispensable at 
every Malo-Russian fireside. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 39 

The old Bulba has declared at table, before 
all the sotniks of his polk J who were present 
in the village, that he should be off next day. 
The mother spends the night in tears, crouch- 
ing by her children's bedside, gazing upon 
them with a look full of anguish like the swal- 
low of the steppe on her nest. She still hopes 
that when he wakes, Bulba will have forgotten 
what he vowed in the exaltation of the bowl. 

"The moon from the height of heaven had 
long been lighting up all the dvor filled with 
sleepers, the thick mass of willows, and the 
tall grass in which the palisade which encir- 
cled the A'^rwas drowned. She sat all nisrht 
by the heads of her beloved sons : not for a 
moment did she turn her eyes from them, and 
she had no thought of sleep. Already the 
horses, prescient of dawn, had all stretched 
themselves upon the grass, and ceased to feed. 
The topmost leaves of the willows began to 
whisper, and little by little a stream of inces- 
sant chattering descended through them to the 
very base. Still she sat in the selfsame place ; 
she felt no fatigue at all, and she wished in 

1 Regiment. 



4° NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

her inmost heart that the night might last as 
long as possible. From the steppe resounded 
the sonorous whinnying of a foal. Ruddy 
streaks stretched across the sky. Bulba sud- 
denly waked up, and leaped to his feet. He 
remembered very well all that he had deter- 
mined upon the evening before." 

The preparations for the departure are de- 
scribed in detail with Homeric satisfaction. 
Bulba commands the mother to give her sons 
her blessing: "A mother's blessing preserves 
from all danger on land and on water." The 
farewell is heart-rending : the poor woman 
seizes the stirrup of her youngest, Andrii', 
clings to his saddle, and twice, in a paroxysm 
of maternal delirium, throws herself in front of 
the horses, until she is led away. Here we 
see the features of a painting rapidly sketched 
by Gogol in another novel. The elements of 
this scene would, moreover, be found elsewhere 
still. It goes back to the ancient dumas, the 
cantilenas of the Malo-Russian, the traces of 
which are constantly found in the epic of 
"Taras Bulba." 

They depart. As they ride along, their minds 



NIKOLAI GOGOL, 4 1 

are filled with melancholy thoughts. Andrii* 
reviews mentally a romantic adventure, the be- 
ginning of which dates from his life at the 
seminary. At Kief, in order to pay back a joke 
which had been played upon him, he made his 
way into the room of a wild Polish girl, the 
daughter of the voi'evod of Kovno. The Polish 
girl made sport of him as though he were a 
savage ; he put up with his dismissal, but fell 
in love with her. It is natural to conjecture 
that this love will have a decisive influence 
upon Andri'i's conduct, and that the beautiful 
girl will appear again. For the time being, the 
activity of the adventurous life just beginning 
drives away these recollections. The Cossacks 
cross the steppe, and the narrator makes us 
realize the wholly novel charm of this primitive 
existence, with its sensations no less strong 
than simple, in these immense spaces which 
under apparent monotony are so varied and 
marvellous. 

They reach the Setch, and nothing equals 
the vigor, the color, the life, of the scenes 
which the story-teller's imagination brings be- 
fore our eyes. When they disembark from the 



4 2 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

ferry-boat, which after a three-hours' passage 
has brought them to the island of Khortitsa, 
Taras Bulba and his sons reach the camp by an 
entrance echoing with the hammers of twenty- 
five smithies, and encumbered with the packs 
of pedlers. A huge Zaporozhets sleeping in 
the very middle of the road, with arms and 
legs stretched out, is the first spectacle which 
attracts their admiration. Farther, a young 
Cossack is dancing with frenzy, dripping with 
sweat in his winter sheepskin : he refuses to 
take it off, for it would quickly find its way into 
the pot-house. The merry fellow has already 
drunk up his cap, his belt, and his embroidered 
hilt. You feel that here is a young, exuberant, 
indomitable race. You have to go back to 
the Iliad to meet such men, and to Homer to 
find again this freshness of delineation. Other 
scenes awaken comparisons such as the author 
of " Taras Bulba" scarcely anticipated. His 
hero finds well-known faces, and he asks after 
his ancient companions in arms. They are 
questions of Philoktetes to Neoptolemos, and 
the same replies, followed by the same melan- 
choly regrets : "And Taras Bulba heard only, 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 43 

as reply, that Borodavka had been hanged at 
Tolopan ; that Koloper had been flayed alive 
near Kizikirmen ; that Pidsuitok's head had 
been salted in a cask, and sent to Tsar-grad 
(Constantinople) itself. The old Bulba hung 
his head, and after a long pause he said, 'Good 
Kazaks were they/ " 

I shall not dwell upon the scenes in which 
Gogol has described for us the customs of the 
Setch, such as the election of the new kotch- 
evoi* ; and the wiles of these Zaporogs, in their 
longing for pillage, to take up the offensive 
without having the appearance of breaking 
treaties. From the Ukra'ina, news is brought 
which arrives at the very nick of time. The 
Poles and the Jews have been heaping up deeds 
of infamy : the Cossack people is oppressed ; 
religion is odiously persecuted. The whole 
camp breaks into enthusiastic fervor. They 
fling the Jew pedlers (kramari) into the water. 
One of them, Yankel, has recognized Taras : 
he throws himself on his knees groaning ; he 
reminds him of a service which he had once 
done Bulba' s brother; finally he escapes pun- 
ishment, thanks to this scornful and brutal pro- 



44 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

tection. A few hours later, Taras finds him 
established under a tent, selling all sorts of 
provisions, powder, screws, gun-flints, at the 
risk of being caught again, and " killed like a 
sparrow." 

"Taras shrugged his shoulders to see what 
was the ruling power of the Jewish race." We 
catch a glimpse here of that lively humor 
which is common in Gogol, and that keenness 
of observation which is always heightened by 
a satiric flavor. 

The Zaporogs invade the Polish soil. They 
lay siege to Dubno. One night, Andri'i sees 
rising before him a woman's form. He recog- 
nizes an old Tartar servant of the voi'evod's 
daughter. She comes in her young mistress's 
name to beg a little bread. The besieged town 
is a prey to all the torments of famine. AndriT 
is anxious instantly to make his way inside the 
walls. He is introduced by a subterranean pas- 
sage by which the old woman reached the 
camp. Andri'i sees once again the woman 
whom he loves, and it is all over with him. 
" He will never see again the Setch, nor his 
father's village, nor the house of God. The 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 45 

Ukraina will never behold again one of its 
bravest sons. The old Taras will tear his gray 
hair by handfuls, cursing the day and the hour 
when to his own shame he begot such a son." 

Here the romance halts to make room for 
the epos. Help comes to the city almost im- 
mediately after Andrii's defection. This news 
is brought by Yankel, who, true Jew ^hat he is, 
has succeeded in penetrating the city, in mak- 
ing his escape, in seeing every thing, hearing 
every thing, and putting a good profit into his 
pocket. What consoles Taras for Andrii's trea- 
son is Ostap's bravery, who is made ataman on 
the battle-field. One must read the exploits 
of giants, where the cruelty of the carnage is 
relieved by the beauty of the coloring. Pic- 
tures of heroic grandeur light up these sinister 
scenes, and the magic of a sparkling palette 
makes poetical the strong touches of the bold- 
est realism. 

Suddenly the news reaches the camp of the 
Zaporogs, that the Setch has been plundered 
by the Tartars. The old Bovdug, the Nestor of 
this second Iliad, proposes a plan which divides 
the besieging army in such a way as to protect 



4& NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

at once the interests and the honor of the Cos- 
sack nation. One part sets out in pursuit of 
the Tartars : the others remain under the walls 
of the city, with the old Taras as ataman. One 
would like to quote from beginning to end 
these lists of heroes, with their Malo-Russian 
names so nearly uniform in termination. One 
would like to reproduce these parentheses, 
these episodes devoted to the complaisant enu- 
meration of the deeds of prowess of all these 
braves. The separation is marked by a melan- 
choly full of grandeur. The feeling of the 
solidarity which has grouped all these men, of 
the brotherhood which unites all these sons 
of the Ukra'fna, is expressed with rare power. 
Taras perceives that it is necessary to create 
some diversion for this profound melancholy. 
He gives his Cossacks the solace of precious 
wine, and * the stimulus of a fortifying word. 
They drink to religion, the Setch, and glory. 
" Never will a splendid action perish ; and the 
glory of the Cossacks shall not be lost like a 
grain of powder dropped from the pan, and 
fallen by chance/' 

The battle begins anew; the cannon make 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 47 

wide gaps in the ranks, and many mothers will 
not see again their sons fallen this day. " Vainly 
the widow will stop the passers-by, and gaze 
into their eyes to see if among them is not 
found the man whom best she loves in all the 
world.'' What an accent in all that, and how 
we discover in the labored arrangement of the 
writer, the native force of the primitive song, 
the depth of the feeling of the people ! This 
arises in fact from the Malo-Russian folk-song; 
and so also do those challenges which recall 
those of the heroes of Argos or of Troy, and 
that sublime death-refrain which each hero 
murmurs as he dies, " Flourish the Russian 
soil ! " and likewise those rhythmic questions 
alternating with replies like couplets, " Is there 
yet powder in the powder-flasks ? Is not the 
Cossack power enfeebled ? Do not the Cossacks 
now show signs of yielding?" — "There still is 
powder in the powder-flasks ; the Cossack power 
is not enfeebled ; the Cossacks do not yet begin 
to yield." 

At the height of the battle, Andrii', who is 
fighting like a lion at the head of the Poles, 
finds himself suddenly face to face with Taras 



48 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

Bulba. Here follows an admirable scene, and 
long admired, but admired in an imitation. Is 
not the conclusion of " Mateo Falcone " an in- 
vention stolen from Gogol ? In the two tales, 
the father becomes the arbiter of the treason 
committed by the son ; the details of this exe- 
cution, the accompanying words, the calculated 
impression of coldness in the account, meant to 
add to the horror of the deed, — all the resem- 
blances seem to form a literary theft, the traces 
of which Merimee would have done better not 
to hide ; and we have almost the right to im- 
pute to him this intention when we see the 
part that he took in disparagement of "Taras 
Bulba." 

This tragedy is followed by a new drama 
still more painful. Ostap is taken prisoner, 
and carried to Warsaw for execution. Taras, 
left for dead, is picked up by his followers. He 
recovers, and, unable to survive his beloved son, 
goes to risk his life in the attempt to rescue 
him. Through Yankel's craft he makes his 
way into Warsaw, but the assistance of the 
Polish Jews fails to get him within the prison 
walls. He arrives only in time to see the 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 49 

execution of the Cossacks. Ostap is broken 
on the wheel before his father's eyes. In a 
moment of weakness the heroic lad utters the 
cry of the Crucified on Golgotha : " Father, 
where art thou ? Dost thou hear this ? " 

" Yes, I hear," replies a mighty voice from 
the midst of the throng. "A detachment of 
mounted soldiers hastened anxiously to scan 
the throng of people. Yankel turned pale as 
death, and when the horsemen had got a 
short distance from him, he turned round in 
terror to look for Taras : but Taras was no 
longer beside him ; every trace of him was 
lost." A little later on, and Taras has seized 
his arms, and is making a terrible "funeral 
mass " in honor of his son. At last he dies, 
pinned down like Prometheus, and burned 
alive ; but from the midst of the flames he 
tastes the triumph which his last shout of 
command has just assured to his soldiers. 



50 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 



When Gogol was spoken of to the great 
romancer Turgenief, he said simply, "He is our 
master; from him we get our best qualities." 
But when Turgenief came to speak of "Taras 
Bulba," he grew animated, and went on with 
an accent of admiration which, for my part, I 
cannot forget, and said, "The day when our 
Gogol stood the colossal Taras on his feet, he 
showed genius." 

It would have been a very delicate question, 
to ask Turgenief his opinion of another of 
Gogol's little masterpieces, " Old-time Propri- 
etors." The question would have seemed in- 
discreet to the author of "Virgin Soil;" for 
when this last romance of Turgenief s appeared, 
all the Russian readers, when they came to 
the charming chapter where the two old men, 
Ffmushka and Fomushka, come upon the stage, 
uttered the same cry: "It is Gogol, pure and 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 5 1 

simple! it is the Starosvyetskie Pomyeshchiki /" 
If the model and the imitation are examined 
closely, a great quantity of differences in detail 
are unravelled ; and it may be said that here 
as elsewhere Turgenief is personal, original in 
his work, in his own fashion. But at first 
glance one has the right to be struck by the 
resemblances. 

" Old-time Proprietors " is a novel of a num- 
ber of pages. In this novel there are no in- 
trigue, no abrupt changes, nothing fantastic, 
no theatrical climaxes, no surprising characters, 
no unexpected sentiments. Gogol dispensed 
with all the elements of success : he seems to 
have wished to reduce the interest to the mini- 
mum, and he wrote a masterpiece. 

He introduces us to one of those country 
houses whose appearance alone tells the story 
of the calm and peaceful life of its inhabitants : 
" Never had a desire crossed the hedge which 
shut in the little dvor" 

In this habitation of sages, all is friendly, 
all is kindly, "even to the phlegmatic baying 
of the dogs." What is to be said of the recep- 
tion which we meet with at the hands of the 



5 2 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

owners of the dwelling ? The husband, Afan- 
asi Ivanovitch, generally sitting down and bent 
over, always smiles, whether he be speaking 
or listening. His wife, Pulkheria Ivanovna, on 
the other hand, is serious ; but there is so much 
goodness in her eyes and in all of her features, 
that a smile would be too much, would render 
insipid her expression of face which is already 
so sweet. 

Afanasi Ivanovitch and Pulkheria Ivanovna 
had grown up without children : thus they had 
come to love each other with that affection 
which is usually reserved for beings in whom 
one's youthful days seem to bloom anew. 
Their youth had been full of life, however, like 
all youth, but it was far away. The husband 
had served in the army ; he had eloped with 
his sweetheart. But this wild period had been 
followed by so many days of a calm, secluded, 
uniform, absolutely happy existence, that they 
never spoke of the past, and it may be doubted 
if they ever thought of it either. 

These delicious hours are disturbed only by 
such events as an indigestion, or a pain in the 
bowels. They are filled only by collations and 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 53 

repasts of greater or less degree. They leave 
room for no other care than that of varying 
the bill of fare, of bringing into agreement the 
most diverse viands, of tempting appetites sated 
but not satiated. 

At first thought, nothing seems more com- 
monplace than such a subject. What poetry, 
what interest even, could be attached to that 
complaining belly whose ever-recurring pangs 
must be lulled to sleep the livelong day and a 
portion of the night ? Herein shines forth all 
the power of Gogol's talent. He paints ego- 
tism for us, double egotism : but he paints it 
with such delicate shades that the picture 
excites something more than admiration ; it 
arouses a sort of sympathy. 

Gogol knows well that happy people are the 
best people; that their joy radiates out, as it 
were, and that it warms, lightens, enlivens, 
just as sadness, even though legitimate, chills, 
wounds, warns away, every thing that ap- 
proaches it. The two old people are happy, 
not so much by the quality of the pleasures 
which they taste, or by the value of the goods 
which they enjoy, as by the assurance which 



54 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

they feel that as long as they live they are not 
going to see this luxurious abundance dis- 
appear, nor these far from ruinous pleasures 
lose their flavor. Notwithstanding the thefts 
of the prikashckiky of the housekeeper, of the 
hands, of the visitors, of their coachman, of 
their valets, ^ this fertile and beneficent soil 
produced all things in such quantity, Afanasi 
Ivanovitch and Pulkheria Ivanovna had so few- 
necessities, that all these depredations could 
have no injurious effect on their well-being. ,, 

These two fortunate people are worshipped 
for their indulgence, which comes from uncon- 
cern ; and for their liberality, which takes its 
rise, if not from the vanity of giving, as La 
Rochefoucauld would have expressed it, yet at 
least from the need of feeling further satisfac- 
tion, after having taken full enjoyment of what 
is indispensable, in allowing others to have a 
certain portion of the superfluous. 

In the same way their pity is, above all, a 
selfish consideration, and a movement of dismay 
at the idea of falling into such disagreeable or 
trying situations as they have seen in the cases 
of others. "Wait," says Afanasi Ivanovitch 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 55 

to each visitor : " we don't know what may 
happen. Robbers may attack you, or you may 
meet with rascals." "God protect us from 
robbers ! " said Pulkheria Ivanovna : " why tell 
such stories when it is night ? " 

In this association for happiness, which is 
scarcely any thing else than the joining of two 
aspirations towards well-being, how did Gogol 
succeed in bringing about his return to the 
idea of sacrifice ? In point of fact, one of these 
good old egotists acts to a certain degree in a 
spirit of self-sacrifice, without ever rising above 
self-love ; becomes partially absorbed in the 
affection of the companion, who is more indif- 
ferent, more inclined to accept fondling with- 
out offering return. All love, it has been said, 
is reduced in last analysis to this : the one 
kisses, the other offers the cheek. In this case 
the one who offers the cheek — that is to say, 
the one who permits the fondling, and limits 
all manifestations of feeling to not ill-natured 
but not kindly teasing — is the husband. His 
wife adores him after her fashion. This adora- 
tion it is vain to express in vulgar language, 
and translate by attentions of far from exalted 



5 6 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

order : it is real, and it brings to the reader's 
lips a smile full of indulgence, even at the 
moment when it compels from the eyes a tear 
of a rare quality, the discreet witness of the 
deepest and purest feeling. 

This good old woman feels that she is dying; 
and at the moment when death " comes to 
take her," she knows only one grief, — that of 
leaving alone, and, as it were, orphaned, this 
poor old child for whom she has lived, and who 
without her will not know what to do with his 
sad life. With prayers, even with threats, good 
soul that she is, she intrusts him to a maid- 
servant old as themselves ; and after making 
all arrangements and dispositions, so that her 
companion " need not feel too sorely her ab- 
sence," she goes whither death calls her. 

Afanasi Ivanovitch at first is overwhelmed 
with grief. On his return from the funeral, 
his solitude comes to him with the sensation 
of an irreparable void ; "and he began to sob 
bitterly, inconsolably ; and the tears flowed, — 
flowed like two streams from his dull eyes." 
Is it not striking to find here the expressions 
of Homer ? M He sat down, pouring forth tears 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 57 

like a stream of dark water, which spreads its 
shady water along the cliff where even the 
goats do not climb." And is there not here, 
as in the epic tale of Taras Bulba, the power of 
the pathetic, the savory freshness of emotion, 
the secret of which is known only to primitive 
poetry ? 

But what is not primitive, what, on the con- 
trary, reveals Gogol as a very well-informed 
writer, a very watchful psychologist, a satirist 
whose scheme was well thought out in advance, 
and whose slightest details are calculated with 
perfect precision, is the little parable which at 
the most touching moment of this tale inter- 
rupts its thread, and brings out its hidden sig- 
nificance, its moral bearing, its psychological 
lesson. 

Gogol leaves the husband and wife at the 
very hour of their most touching separation, 
and tells us rapidly the romance of a young 
man madly in love with a mistress who is 
dying. In the effervescence of his grief, the 
lover twice in succession tries to kill himself : 
the first time, by a pistol-shot in the head; 
somewhat later, when he is barely recovered, 



5 8 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

by throwing himself under the wheel of a pass- 
ing carriage. Again he recovers ; "and a year 
later," says Gogol, "I met him in a fashiona- 
ble salon. He was seated at a table, playing 
boston, and was saying in a free and easy tone, 
'Little Misery.' Behind him, leaning on his 
chair, stood his young and pretty wife, toying 
with the counters in the basket." 

The old Afanasi Ivanovitch does not try to 
kill himself; but he dies slowly day by day 
from the ever-growing regret for her whom he 
has lost, from the wound, always more keen and 
more deep, which has been left in his heart, or, 
if the expression be preferred, left in his very 
flesh by the torn cluster of his imperishable 
habits. 

" I have never written from imagination," 
said Gogol : "it is a talent which I do not pos- 
sess." "Pushkin," he says in another place, 
"has hit it right when in speaking of me he 
declared that he had never known in any other 
writer an equal gift of making a vivid picture 
of the miseries of actual life, in sketching with 
a firm touch the nothingness of a good-for- 
nothing man." This talent, which will be seen 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 59 

illustrated in such a brilliant way in the great 
romance of " Dead Souls," already begins to 
give a striking character to the stories written 
by Gogol about St. Petersburg. Here he de- 
scribes in a most fascinating way the morti- 
fications, the humiliations, the tortures even, 
which he had felt or anticipated at the time 
of the painful beginning of his literary career, 
and his wearisome sojourn in the bureaucracy. 

"The Portrait, " for example, is a fantastic 
tale which is distinguished from the stories of 
the former collection by a satiric accent full of 
bitterness. It is the account of a painter kept 
in the depths of wretchedness just as long as 
he takes his art seriously. A happy chance 
places in his hands a sum of money which 
allows him to engage rooms on the Nevsky 
Prospekt. He allows trickery to usurp the 
place of work. He grows rich from the day 
when he loses his talent : however, the feeling 
of having deserted his ideal follows him like 
remorse, and this remorse leads him straight 
to madness. 

"The Cloak " is the story of a small official, 
gentle, conscientious, but timid, slow, and ab- 



60 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

sent-minded. The poor devil has a fixed pur- 
pose, — the purchase of a cloak to keep him 
from the cold. This never-to-be-realized idea 
finally unsettles his somewhat feeble brain. 

It is noticeable that the most lugubrious re- 
frains serve for the conclusion of these different 
moral analyses. " The recollections of a Luna- 
tic," known in France under the title " Les 
Memoires d'un Fou," take the reader one step 
farther into this region of mental trouble, which 
is explored with a boldness truly disquieting. 
Involuntarily one thinks of the author's own 
final insanity; and the tale has the effect of a 
prelude, or at least of a prognostication. 

At the risk of repetition, I lay especial em- 
phasis upon this evolution which took place in 
the mind and in the work of Nikolai' Gogol. 
In the "Evenings at the Farm," the satirical 
note scarcely appears, except in a few details ; 
it is found tempered, and as it were refreshed, 
by a pure breath of poetry ; Nature spoke there 
almost as much as man, and she spoke a lan- 
guage of very penetrating sweetness and of 
superb grandeur. In the novels on St. Peters- 
burg, satire has already entirely usurped her 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 6l 

place. There is added, to be sure, an element 
of fancy, and of caprice, which is no longer the 
poetry of the first novels, but which still draws 
on the imagination ; a troubled, unregulated 
imagination, which in Gogol shows a physical 
and moral state sufficiently akin to the hyper- 
esthesia of seers, of the insane. This period 
of excitement is followed by several years of 
rather morose observation and contemplation, 
during which Gogol writes or plans for his two 
great works, the comedy of "The Revizor" and 
the romance of "The Dead Souls." Here we 
are in full satire, and the satire is fully in the 
domain of reality, — reality often vulgar, and 
sometimes odious. The author paints only 
what he sees ; and if amid the objects of his 
contemplation, and his keen pitiless glance, 
there passes often as it were a shade of illusion, 
it is only a gloomy illusion, a reflection of 
melancholy obscuring the real day, and making 
the colors of things more sombre, the aspect of 
men more pitiable. 

It is not that the romance of "The Dead 
Souls," and especially the comedy of "The 
Rcvizor" have not details, or even whole 



62 NIKOLAI GOCOL. 

scenes, which are very amusing. There is no 
satire without gayety ; and Gogol understands 
how to indulge in raillery, that is to say, how 
to make fun at the expense of another, as 
perfectly as any satirist that ever lived. But 
never was laughter more bitter than his, and 
it never came nearer the ancient definition, 
" cachinnus perfidum ridens." This bitterness 
of style is only too well explained by a morbid 
state of mind, the first manifestations of which 
can be traced back even to Gogol's infancy, 
while its tragic end was madness. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 63 



VI. 

The comedy of "The Revizor" (The Inspect- 
or-General) is therefore a satire, — a satire 
on Russian functionaryism. The action takes 
place in a small provincial city. The tchinov- 
niks of the district have met at the mayor's, for 
news has just been brought of the approaching 
visit of the rcvizor. " What can you expect ? " 
asks the mayor J with a sigh : "it is a judgment 
from God ! Hitherto it has fallen on other 
cities. It is our turn now." 

Like a prudent man, he has taken his meas- 
ures, and he advises the other employees to do 
likewise. "You," he says to the director of the 
hospital, — ''you will do well to take pains that 
every thing is on a good footing. . . . Let 
'em put on white cotton nightcaps, and don't 
allow the patients to look like chimney-sweeps 
as they usually do. — And you," he says to 

1 Gorodnitchi. 



64 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

the doctor, "you must look out that each bed 
has its label in Latin, or some other language. 
. . . And it would be better not to have so 
many patients, for they won't fail to throw 
the blame on the administration." The director 
of the hospital explains the method of treat- 
ment which is adopted. No costly medicines : 
man is a simple being ; if he dies, he dies ; 
if he recovers, he recovers. Besides, any other 
method would be scarcely practicable with a 
German doctor who does not understand Rus- 
sian, and consequently cannot tell at all what 
his patients say. 

" You," he says to the justice of the peace, 
"pay attention to your tribunal! Your boy 
brings his geese into your great hall, and they 
come quacking between the legs of the plain- 
tiffs. . . . And your audience-chamber looks like 
— the Devil knows what! a horsewhip in the 
midst of briefs ! and the assessor, who always 
exhales an odor as though he had just come 
out of a distillery ! " But the most serious 
part of the matter is the rumors of corruption. 
"A trifle," replies the justice: "a few grey- 
hounds as presents." And he immediately 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 65 

returns allusion for allusion : " Ah ! I did not 
say that if some one had presented me with 
a five-hundred-ruble s/iufia, and a shawl for 
my wife " — The mayor interrupts warmly, 
with that tone of hypocrisy so common to the 
Russian tchinovnik, " That's all right ! Do 
you know why you take presents of dogs ? 
It's because you don't believe in God. You 
never go to church. I at least have some 
religion : Fridays I go to mass. But you — 
Ah ! I know you well. When you begin to 
descant on the way the world was made, your 
hair stands up on your head. 

"And you," he says to the principal of the 
college, — "you watch over your professors. 
Their actions are suspicious ; there is one who 
so far forgets himself in his chair as to put 
his fingers behind his cravat, and to scratch his 
chin : it is not necessary to teach the young 
habits of independence." The postmaster re- 
mains. The mayor urges him to open a few 
letters, so as to assure himself that there are 
no denunciations. " You need not teach me 
my trade," replies the postmaster: "I have 
nothing else to do." In fact, it is his daily 



66 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

amusement : he could not do without this read- 
ing. Some letters are as well composed as the 
Moscow journals. He has at this very moment 
in his pocket a young lieutenant's letter, — 
reminiscences of a ball, an elegant description. 
The mayor begs him to hold back every peti- 
tion of complaint. " There's nothing to fear 
any other way. It would be a different thing 
if this were generally the custom ; but it's just 
a little family affair, the way we do it." 

Two loungers of the place, 1 two self-impor- 
tant bustlers, in their eager rivalry of tittle- 
tattle and gossip, run up all out of breath, and, 
after a great deal of desultory talk, are delivered 
of the great news. He has come, the govern- 
ment tchinovniky the revizor ; he saw them eat- 
ing salmon at the hotel ; he cast a terrible look 
at their plates. " Akh ! God in heaven," cries 
the mayor ; " have pity upon us, miserable 
offenders ! " 

And here follows a general confession, a re- 
capitulation of the most recent sins of moment: 
an under-officer's wife whipped, prisoners de- 
prived of their rations, wine-shops established in 

1 Bobtchinski and Dobtchinski by name. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 6j 

open defiance of the law, the streets not swept. 
" How old is he ? He's a young man ; then 
there's more hope than with an old devil. 
Quick ! orders, measures ; and let us get ahead 
of him. My hat ! my sword ! but the sword is 
ruined. 

"That cursed hatter! He sees that the mayor 
has an old sword, and does not send him a new 
one. What a pack of villains ! Akh ! my fine 
fellows ! I am perfectly sure they have their 
complaints all ready, and that they will rise up 
right out of the cobble-stones. Let everybody 
take hold of the street. The Devil take the 
street ! Fetch me a broom, I say, and have 
the street cleaned in front of the hotel ; and 
let it be well done. — Listen ! Take care 
there, yon ! I know you well. You put on 
a saintly look, and yet you hide the silver 
spoons in your boots. You look out ! Don't 
you dare to stir me up! What kind of a job 
did you concoct at the tailor's ? He gave you 
two arshins of cloth to make you a uniform, 
and you gobbled up the whole piece. Atten- 
tion ! You steal too much for your rank." 

That phrase has taken its place among the 



68 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

popular proverbs in Russia, and our Moliere 
has not many more pointed. Exactly as in 
Moliere, the situation is spun out and renewed 
with a liveliness which suffers no loss of force. 
On the mayor's lips, command follows com- 
mand ; ideas crowd upon one another ; words 
get tripped up; exclamations of fury, of terror, 
fly out ; the note of hypocrisy mingles with his 
main characteristic, the violence of which forces 
its way to the surface under false appearances. 
And this inward trouble is rendered visible, as 
it were, by stage tricks, not free from vulgarity, 
but extremely amusing. "You have the hat- 
box in your hand : here is your hat." All this 
forms a rude, rough, but new and irresistible 
element of comedy. 

The personage who thus sets a whole city by 
the ears is a poor devil, himself in a peck of 
trouble. Klestakof has left Petersburg, where 
he is a small official, in order to spend his vaca- 
tion in the province. On the way he has gam- 
bled, has emptied his pockets, and he is waiting 
for his father to send him a fresh supply of 
funds to pay travelling expenses and the land- 
lord's bill. We learn all these details from his 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 69 

valet Osip. He it is who, in his description of 
the situation, gives us the key to his master's 
character. " One day he lives like a lord, the 
next he perishes with starvation. But we 
must have carriages. Every day he sends me 
to get theatre-tickets. This lasts a week, and 
then he tells me to bring him his new suit of 
clothes from the nail. A suit costs him a hun- 
dred and fifty rubles. He spends twenty rubles 
for a waistcoat. I won't answer for the trou- 
sers : it's impossible to tell what that amounts 
to. And the wherefore of all this ? the where- 
fore ? I will tell you. He does not attend to 
his business ; he goes for a walk on the Presh- 
pektive (the Nevsky Prospekt). He plays his 
game. Akh ! if the old gentleman knew all this 
business, he would not bother his head whether 
his son held a place in government : he would 
take off his shirt, and give him such a drubbing 
as would warm him up for a week." 

In this comedy of "The Revizor" the valet 
Osip fills a comic role quite like that of the fool 
in Shakspeare, or the gracioso in the Spanish 
comedy. The Russian buffoon, however, is a 
clown rather than a joker. He does not en- 



7° NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

liven the scene with jests: he makes the specta- 
tor split his sides by his artless blunders. This 
smacks of farce, and may seem overdone. But 
exaggeration in this way is not in the power 
of every one. It is the splendid fault of Aristo- 
phanes, and even of Moliere. Let us remember 
what Fenelon, La Bruyere, and Rousseau said 
of it. And after all, in spite of the famous 
definition, is it not the greatest triumph of the 
comic poet to make the fastidious laugh, and 
especially smile ? An excellent actor of our 
own time defined the great comedian as one 
who has only to show his grimace at the open- 
ing of a door, to make the whole public shout 
with laughter. Are not the author and the 
actor of genius told by the same characteristic ? 
Have not both of them the secret of this 
grimace ? 

To return to the analysis of the piece : Kles- 
takof scolds his valet because he no longer 
dares to report the traveller's complaints at the 
office. The landlord treats this stranger as a 
man who does not pay his bills. After many 
negotiations he permits him to have some dish- 
water as apology for soup, and some burned 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 7 1 

sole-leather in place of the roast. Amid the 
vociferations wrung from him by such an out- 
rage, Klestakof beholds Osip returning to an- 
nounce a call from the mayor. He imagines 
that the official has come in order to put him 
in arrest, with which he was threatened only a 
few moments since; and he endeavors immedi- 
ately to exonerate himself in the mayor's eyes. 
His explanations, enigmatical for the still more 
anxious visitor; clear only for the reader or the 
audience, have no other effect than to increase 
the terror of the high functionary, who thinks 
that he is in the presence of a crafty inspector- 
general. In the incoherent remarks, full of in- 
genuous confessions, which the little tchinovnik 
makes to him, the mayor hears only certain 
portentous words, — the prison, the minister. 
He is only half re-assured when the conversa- 
tion offers him a chance to proffer some money 
and insist on its acceptance. 

Klestakof finally blurts out how matters really 
stand. "I am here, and I have not a kopek.'' 
The mayor sees in this avowal only a further 
illustration of cunning. He immediately offers 
his services. The stranger borrows two hun- 



72 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

drecl rubles of him. "Take it," he says ea- 
gerly; "don't trouble to count it, it isn't worth 
while : " and instead of two hundred rubles, he 
slips four hundred into his hand. And now 
behold our two sharpers delighted to find them- 
selves so easily in agreement. Klestakof sus- 
pects that there is some misunderstanding, but 
he takes pains not to say a w T ord which may 
bring about an explanation. The mayor thinks 
that he can detect, under Klestakof's ambigu- 
ous actions, an immensely profound plan. u He 
wants his incognito respected. Two can play 
that game. Let us make believe not know who 
he is." While the traveller's baggage is trans- 
ported to a place more worthy of him, — that 
is, to the mayor's own dwelling, — they drive off 
in a drozhsky to visit the college and the hos- 
pital. They hastily turn their backs on the 
prison, which offers not the slightest attraction 
for Klestakof. " What's the good of seeing the 
prison ? It would be much better to give our 
attention to institutions of beneficence ! " 

Here we are now in the mayor's house. 
They are waiting for Klestakof ; and the en- 
trance of this important personage is very well 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 73 

led up to by two or three scenes of chattering, in 
which the voices of the mayor's wife and daugh- 
ter are dominant. At last he appears, followed 
by the mayor and other tchinovniks of the dis- 
trict. They have just returned from visiting 
the hospital; that is to say, from enjoying a 
bounteous collation at the superintendent's. 
The ice is broken : tongues are unloosed ; 
Klestakof s performs wonders. 

First come the exquisite courtesies of the in- 
troduction, then the expatriation on the charms 
of the capital ; and instantly there begins a 
series of inventions grafted by Klestakof one 
upon the other. 

Here is the summing-up which loses the 
devil-possessed movement, but not the comic 
value of the scene. 

At the ministry, Klestakof is the intimate of 
the dircktor ; on the street, he is recognized as 
he is out walking ; the soldiers leave the guard- 
house, and present arms ; at the theatre, he 
frequents the green-room ; he composes vaude- 
villes; he is the friend of Pushkin, "that great 
original ; " r he writes for the magazines ; he 

1 lie says that he addresses Pushkin by the familiar pronoun tui 
(thou). 



74 NIKOLAI COGOL. 

wrote the articles on the " Marriage of Fi- 
garo," "Robert le Diablo," "Norma." It is 

he who writes under the signature of the 
Baron cle Brambeus. A book is mentioned : " I 
wrote it;" the daughter objects that it bears 
on the title-page the name of Iuri Miloslavski ; 
he replies to the objection [by declaring that 
there is another book by the same name, which 
he wrote]. The balls which he gives at Peters- 
burg are marvellous beyond description ; he 
collects around his whist-table the minister 
of foreign affairs, the ambassadors of France 
and of Germany. From time to time a glimpse 
of the truth shines through this tissue of im- 
provised boastings, but he leisurely recalls the 
phrase imprudently uttered. His importance 
increases at every new effort of his imagina- 
tion. Once he had been offered the direction 
of the ministry : he would have been glad to 
decline, but what would the Emperor have 
said ? Therefore he accepts the office, and 
with what hands ! He inspires everybody with 
awe ; all bow in the dust before him ; the coun- 
cil of state trembles at sight of him ; at a 
moment's notice he will be made field-marshal. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL, 75 

The adventurer would not make any end of 
speaking, did not intoxication become a factor, 
and cut short his flow of words. The tchinov- 
niks, whose dismay has reached the highest 
pitch, respectfully assist him to leave the din- 
ing-room, to sleep off the effects of his glory 
and his wine on a bed in a neighboring room. 
" Charming young man ! " say the mayor's wife 
and daughter in chorus. " Terrible man ! " de- 
clares the mayor, in an anxious and dubious 
tone, for he has detected in all this braggadocio 
some grains of falsehood. " But how can one 
speak of any thing without a little prevarica- 
tion ? The certain thing is that he makes fools 
of the ministers, that he goes to court/' And 
w T hile the false revizor is snoring peacefully, 
taking his mid-day nap, they turn to his valet 
Osip as a make-shift. He also unflinchingly 
receives flatteries, compliments, and fees. 

But now follows the truly new and powerful 
part of this bold satire. How to wheedle the 
ferocious inspector ? Is he a man to accept 
money ? This attempt at corruption may lead 
to Siberia. The justice essays the risk with 
fear and trembling. The bank-note which he 



7& NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

held in his hand slips out. To his great dis- 
may, he sees the rcvizor make a dash for the 
note ; to his great delight, he hears the words, 
"You would dome great pleasure by lending 
me this." — "Why, certainly, only too much 
honor." And discreetly he allows another to 
take his place. 

The postmaster enters in great style, and as- 
sumes his most official attitude. Klestakof cuts 
short the formalities of the interview : " Could 
you not lend me three hundred rubles ? " A 
new and eager acquiescence ; a new and still 
more eager disappearance. 

The college principal appears : Klestakof, 
now in good humor, offers him a cigar, in- 
dulges in rollicking conversation, all of which 
completely dumbfounds the poor man's brain, 
which is already full of perplexity. But a new 
forced loan of three hundred rubles is accom- 
plished in four words ; and the principal takes 
to his heels, crying, " God have mercy, he has 
not visited my classes yet ! " 

The director of the hospitals has hoped to 
whiten himself at the expense of the other tchi- 
novniks. lie has brought against them a com- 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 77 

plaint which our adventurer has but to take 
action upon. The false revizor consents that 
all the details should be transcribed for him. 
What the director does not think to proffer is 
the sum of four hundred rubles ; but this is 
finally demanded of him, and paid over with- 
out a word. 

It is more difficult to extract a little money 
from the two gossips who were the first to 
discover, in the traveller at the inn, the stuff 
of which an inspector-general is made. This 
devil of a man nevertheless has the skill to ex- 
tort a little something from them. They are 
not tchinovniksy to be sure, but how gayly they 
swell the ranks of the procession! Gogol jus- 
tifies their visit in showing them up in the 
capacity of petitioners. The one wants to legiti- 
mize a bastard son of his, " born, so to speak, 
in wedlock," and consequently half legitimate. 
The other would like to have his name men- 
tioned, on some suitable occasion, before the 
court and the Emperor : " nothing but these 
words, ' in such and such a village lives such 
and such a person ; ' yes, nothing more, — 
'such an one lives in such a village/" 



7§ NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

This train of tchinovniks has its counterpart 
full of eloquent, and even melancholy, humor. 
Klestakof has just finished counting his money; 
he finds the part easy to play, and full of profit. 
But Osip, whose dull head contains more sense 
than his master's giddy pate, advises him to 
have his post-horses put in, and to pack off 
while yet there is time. Klestakof admits that 
his reasoning is good ; still, the farce is so pleas- 
ant that he cannot refrain from writing to one 
of his friends, a Petersburg journalist. It is 
easy to conjecture that this letter will never 
reach its destination, and that it will serve to 
bring about the denotement. 

Suddenly voices are heard outside the house. 
It is the merchants, the hatter at their head, 
coming to bring their complaints before the 
revizor. The mayor steals from them shame- 
lessly : when they complain, he slams the door 
in your face, saying, " I will not apply the 
knout, for that's against the law ; but I will 
make you cat humble pie." A woman comes, 
complaining that her husband had been forcibly 
conscripted as a soldier, in place of two others 
who had escaped service through the aid of 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 79 

bribes. " Your husband is a thief : he is al- 
ready, or he will be," — that is the excuse of- 
fered her by this " blackguard of a mayor." 

But it is a real inspector-general's business 
to perform the functions of his office. Kles- 
takof has enjoyed the profits, and thinks that 
he can confine his duties to that. At this mo- 
ment the sick appear in their hospital dressing- 
gowns, fever and pestilence in their faces : the 
false revizor rudely drives away all this impor- 
tunate throng, and shuts the door fast. 

In happy contrast to the lugubrious impres- 
sion of these scenes, the author introduces 
some inventions of charming buffoonery. The 
mayor's daughter enters. To beguile the 
time, Klestakof makes love to her, kisses her, 
falls on his knees before her. The mother ap- 
pears, and expresses her astonishment — but in 
the fashion of Belise, in the " Femmes Sa- 
vantes;" such homage as that is befitting. The 
daughter departs after a sharp ■ reprimand. 
The extempore lover, now addressing the 
mother, continues the wooing which he had 
begun with the daughter, who returns just as 
he throws himself on his knees for the second 



SO NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

time. The mayor comes in unexpectedly, and 
almost chokes with surprise to hear an in- 
spector-general ask for his daughter's hand. 
How can he deny himself such an honor? The 
agreement is made on the spot, and the two 
lovers fall into each other's arms. 

Just at this moment the valet Osip comes, 
and, twitching his master by the tail of his 
coat, announces that the horses are ready. 
The adventurer, recalled to reality, ventures 
a brief explanation : a very wealthy uncle to 
visit, a day's journey distant. The post-chaise 
departs ; and the act ends with the postilion's 
command to his horses, " Off with you, on 
win^s ! " 

The denotement has been unnecessarily antici- 
pated. It has a gayety, a clash, a variety in its 
detail, which make it amusing, fascinating, 
rich in surprises. Nevertheless it is only the 
identical dinotiment of our "Misanthrope," 
the all-revealing letter in which each char- 
acter of the drama receives his share of epi- 
grams. Gogol's humor is given free play in 
this series of rapidly sketched portraits, the 
originals of which are united around the reader, 



NIKOLA r GOGOL, ol 

who is spared no more than the rest. The 
development of the idea has an inexhaustible 
verve ; but the idea itself belongs to Moliere, 
and Merimee lono; ac;o ascribed to him all 
the honor of it. 

What belongs to Gogol, what gives the de'- 
noument of "The Revizor" an original coloring, 
is the mayor's comic fury at finding that he 
has been cheated in such a fine fashion. His 
new title of father-in-law of an inspector-gen- 
eral had already begun to exalt him, to intoxi- 
cate him. He has crushed the merchants 
with it. He has overwhelmed them with the 
lightning of his glance. He has dismissed 
them with one of those deep phrases, such 
as paint the Russian tchinovnik with his re- 
doubtable hypocrisy : " God commands us to 
forgive : I have no spite against you. You 
will only be good enough to remember that I 
am giving my daughter in marriage, and not 
to the first noble that comes along. Endeavor 
to have your congratulations suitable to the 
occasion. Don't expect to get off with a 
smoked salmon or a sugar-loaf. Do you hear 
me ? Go, and God protect you ! " The sly 



82 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

old dog has already begun to dream of a gen- 
eral's epaulets : it can be seen how he is puffed 
up ; he. receives with the air of a prince the 
unctuous compliments of the other tcliinovniks. 
Suddenly the pail of milk falls, and the milk is 
spilt ; the balloon bursts ! In all that comes to 
pass, there is only sheer comedy; a skilful 
sharper, and duped rascals. The one who is 
most duped of all, the mayor, gives himself 
up to a storm of the most amusing frenzy. 
"You great fool! " he says to himself, pounding 
himself, "idiot! you have taken a dish-clout for 
a great personage ! And this very moment he 
is galloping off down the road to the sound of 
the bells. He will tell the story to everybody. 
Worse than all, he will find some penny-a-liner, 
some scribbler, to cover you with ridicule ! Be- 
hold the disgrace of it ! He will not spare 
your rank or your office, and he will find peo- 
ple to applaud him with their voices and their 
hands. You laugh? Laugh at yourselves, yes. 
[He stamps with passion.] If I only had 'em ! 
these scribblers ! Cursed liberals ! Spawn of 
the Devil! I'd put a bit on 'cm ! I'd put a curb 
on 'em ! I'd crush the whole brood of 'cm." 



NIKOLAI GOGOL, 83 

And behold what adds a still keener flavor to 
this adventure. 

At the very moment when the mayor, out 
of his wits at having been capable of mistaking 
this fop for an inspector-general, is trying to 
find the one who egged him on to commit this 
blunder, a policeman enters, and says, " You 
are requested to repair instantly to the revizor, 
who has come on a mission from Petersburg. 
He has just arrived at the hotel." The whole 
company are, as it were, thunderstruck ; and 
the curtain falls on a scene of silence, the ar- 
rangement of which Gogol provided for with the 
minute accuracy of a realistic, writer, for whom 
attitudes and facial expression are the indis- 
pensable complement of a moral painting. In 
point of fact, they are, especially at times when 
a lively emotion tears away all masks, the faith- 
ful and legible translation of character. 



84 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 



VII. 

After having laid bare the vices of the 
Russian administration, in his satiric comedy 
of "The Revizor" Gogol attacked the social 
question in his romance of the "Dead Souls." 
He set himself to work at the very moment 
when the Tsar Nicolas, in a liberal humor, 
proclaimed in a tckaz of prodigious power the 
principle of the abolition of serfage. Unhap- 
pily this liberal policy of the throne was not 
strong enough to hold its own before the dis- 
satisfaction of the higher classes : the decree 
was not put into effect. But the impulse was 
given, and Gogol's satire once more became 
the echo of the popular feeling. 

The very title of the romance was a satiric 
touch, the significance of which could *not 
escape a -Russian, but which for a French 
reader needs rather a long explanation. At 
the time of serfdom, a Russian proprietor's 




NIKOLAI GOGOL. 85 

fortune was net valued according to the extent 
of his lands, but according to the number of 
male serfs which were held upon them. These 
serfs were called "souls" (dusJii). The owner 
of a thousand souls was a great proprietor ; the 
owner of a hundred souls was only a beggarly 
country squire. The proprietor paid the capi- 
tation tax for all the souls on his domain; but, 
as the census was rarely taken, it happened 
that he had long to pay for dead serfs, until a 
new official revision struck them out from 
among the number of the living. It is easy 
to see what these dead souls must have cost a 
proprietor whose lands had been visited by 
famine, cholera, or any other scourge ; and his 
interest in getting rid of them will be ex- 
plicable. 

What seems more surprising is, that there 
were people ready to purchase them. But here, 
again, it is sufficient to lessen the strangeness 
of the fact, if we accompany it with a simple 
explanation. There was in Russia, at the time 
to which Gogol's novel transports us, a sort of 
bank, established and supported by the State, 
and directed by the managing boards of certain 



86 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

institutions for orphan boys and girls, deaf- 
mutes, and others. This bank borrowed money 
at four per cent, and loaned on deposits. Here 
a man could pawn his personal property, or 
mortgage his real estate and his peasants up to 
ten thousand souls, say at two hundred rubles a 
head ; in other words, up to two million rubles. 
Here is a reason why the hero of Gogol's 
romance, Tchitchikof, a former customs officer, 
dismissed for embezzlement, purchases dead 
souls. He hopes some day to possess a suffi- 
cient number to populate an out-of-the-way 
estate in a distant province of the empire, and 
to pawn this domain to the State for a sum 
large enough to permit him to go and live in 
grand style abroad. 

As can be seen, the motive of the book has 
lost its point since the abolition of serfage, and 
this motive never was very interesting except 
for Russian readers. But this motive serves 
Gogol only as a piquant pretext for a series of 
studies of provincial life in Russia. These 
studies have an originality, a variety, and some- 
times a force, so great that it is to be feared 
lest our analysis can give only a very feeble 
notion of it. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 87 

The hero of " Dead Souls " is a veritable 
hero of a realistic romance ; that is to say, he 
has nothing which justifies the title of hero. 
He is neither handsome nor ugly, neither fat 
nor lean, neither stiff nor pliant ; he cannot any 
longer be taken for a young man. He is more 
prudent than courageous, more ambitious than 
honorable, more obsequious than dignified, more 
scrupulous of his bearing than of his conduct ; 
at once capable of trickery, and guilty of heed- 
lessness ; without talent, but not without ex- 
pedients ; with no foundation of goodness, but 
not without some small change of benevolence ; 
without conscience, but not lacking a certain 
varnish of decency and gravity. This charac- 
terless r personage is brought out in a sort of 
relief by the very frame in which the author 
has ingeniously }Dlaced him. Tchitchikof 
travels across the province ; and Gogol does 
not separate him from what is his indispensable 
accompaniment in his outlandish Odyssey, — I 
mean from his coach, his horses, and his ser- 
vants. 

Petrushka, his lackey, is a blockhead of 

1 Efface. 



83 NIKOLAI GOGOL 

thirty summers, with a big nose, thick lips, 
coarse features, and with a skin exhaling an 
odor sui generis which clings to every thine: that 
comes in his vicinity. He speaks rarely, and 
reads as much as possible ; but little difference 
makes it to him, what the nature of the book 
may be. He does not bother his head with the 
subject. ''What pleased him was not what he 
read : it was the mere act of reading. It did 
not trouble him to see that he was eternally 
coming upon words the meaning of which the 

Ox O 

deuce alone knows." 

The coachman, Selifan, is a little man, as 
talkative as Petrushka is silent. He fills the 
long hours of the journey across the deserted 
steppe or the monotonous cultivated fields, 
with monologues laughable in their variety. 
For the most part, he addresses his incoherent 
discourse to his horses. With his reproaches, 
sometimes accompanied by a blow of the whip 
under the belly or across the ears, he stirs up 
" Spot," a huge trickster, harnessed on the 
right for draught, who makes believe pull so 
that one would think that he was doing him- 
self great injury, but in reality he is not pull- 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 89 

ing at all. The bay, on the contrary, is a very 
" respectable M horse : he does his work con- 
scientiously ; as does also the light sorrel, sur- 
named the Assessor because he was bought 
of a justice. The coachman, Sclifan, who 
understands the spirit of his animals, finds no 
subject too lofty for their comprehension. He 
quotes their master's example, who is a man 
to be respected because he has been in gov- 
ernment service, because he is a college coun- 
cillor ; x and when once he enters into these 
abstract and subtile considerations about duty. 
he goes so far, he soars so high, that he regu- 
larly gets lost in the confusing network of 
Russian roads, and sometimes he finishes his 
discussion in the bottom of a slough. 

As to the carriage, it also has its strange 
physiognomy, and, so to speak, its national 
stamp. It is the britchka, with leather flaps 
fortified with two round bull's-eyes ; the britch- 
ka, whose postilion, not booted in the German 
fashion, but simply with his huge beard and 
his mittens, seated on no one knows what, 

1 Kollczhsky scvyitnik % the ninth rank in the civil tchin } giving 
personal nobility. 



9° NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

whistles, brandishes his whip, shouts his song, 
and makes his team fly over the trembling 
earth. 

In this equipage Tchitchikof reaches the vil- 
lage of N . He introduces himself to the 

mayor, to the vice-mayor, to the fiscal attorney, 
to the natchahiik of the court, to the chief 
of police, to the vodka-izxrtxtr, to the general 
director of the crown works. His politeness, 
his flattering words skilfully accommodated to 
each of these gentlemen, his air of concern in 
presence of the ladies, immediately give him the 
reputation of being a man of the best tone. He 
is overwhelmed with invitations ; he makes his 

first appearance in the fine society of N 

on the occasion of a party given by the mayor. 
The throng of functionaries is divided into two 
classes, — the " slenders " (flitets), who hover like 
butterflies around the ladies, jargon gayly in 
French, and in three years succeed in mort- 
gaging all their paternal property to the Lorn- 
bard; and secondly the "solids" (gros), who 
tlicsaitrize without making any stir, buy estates 
in the name of their wives, and some fine day 
go into retirement, so as to go and live like 



NIKOLAI GOGOL, 9 1 

village proprietors, like true Russian bavins, 
until their heirs, who are generally the " slen- 
ders," come to take possession of the inherit- 
ance, and make a single mouthful of it. 

In this somewhat monotonous throng, Tchi- 
tchikof's attention is attracted by two country 
gentlemen, — Manilof, a Russian Philinte, ex- 
tremely fair-spoken, assiduous, and sensitive ; 
and Sabakevitch, a colossus of brusque man- 
ners, of laconic speech. Both of them invite 
the new-comer to honor with his presence their 
dwellings, which are only a few versts distant. 
Here the novelist's plan becomes apparent. 
He is going to take his hero and his readers 
from visit to visit, through all the households 
of these provincial proprietors, whose foibles 
he intends to make sport of, and whose vices 
he intends to scourge. And what the travel- 
ler's business will bring under our observation 
in his peregrinations, will be the condition of 
the serfs under different masters, — a preca- 
rious and ill-regulated condition under the best, 
lamentable under those who are bad. Thus 
the importance of the literary value in the 
romance of the "Dead Souls," whatever it may 



9 2 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

be, fades before the political and social aim 
of the conception. Or, rather, here may be 
seen the new and durable character which 
Gogol impressed upon the national romance. 
He applied that form in which fancy reigns 
to the real description of Russian life : that is to 
say, he devoted it to the portraying of those 
abuses of every sort in which the Russian is 
still, to a certain degree, swaddled ; to the ex- 
pression of the sufferings under which the 
thinking class, more oppressed to-day than the 
serfs of yore, feel themselves more and more 
crushed ; finally, to the translation of all those 
obscure but insistent desires, those vague but 
ardent aspirations, which are summed up in the 
old Muscovite cry " Forward ! " repeated to-day 
in a whisper, from one end of the country to 
the other, like a watchword. 

The first household which Gogol brings us 
to visit, in company with the purchaser of dead 
souls, is that of the Manilof family. At the 
very approach to the village of Manilovka, you 
begin to feel an impression of vulgarity, of 
vapidness, and of ennui. The country is poor, 
but it docs not exclude pretentiousness : in the 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 93 

bottom is a greenish pond, like a billiard-cloth, 
and on the higher part of the rising ground 
a few atrophied birches. Under two of these 
decrepit and consumptive trees stands an 
arbor with flat roof, with green painted lattice- 
work, the entrance of which is made by two 
little pillars with a pediment, on which can be 
read the inscription : " Temple de la me'ditation 
solitaire" 

The frame is entirely appropriate to the 
characters. Manilof is a pale blonde, with eyes 
blue as faience. "His ever-smiling face, his 
ever-sugared words, make you say at first, 
'What a good and amiable man!' The next 
minute you will not say any thing ; and the 
third you ask yourself, 'What the deuce is this 
man, anyway?' ' Above all, he is a man weary 
of life. He has not a passion, or a hobby, or 
a fault. He has nothing decisive in his char- 
acter. At one time he was in the service ; and 
he left in the army the reputation of being 
a very gentle officer, but a "spendthrift of 
Levant tobacco." After returning to his 
estate, he allowed the management of it to 
go as chance would have it. " When one 



94 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

of his peasants came to find him, and said, 
scratching the nape of his neck, ' Barin, let 
me go and find some work so as to earn enough 
to pay my obrok (quit-rent) ; ' — ' All right, go 
ahead ! ' he replied, drawing a full whiff from 
his pipe ; and he did not take the trouble to 
think that this man wanted to get out of his 
sight so as to have a better chance to indulge 
in his habits of drunkenness." Manilof him- 
self is continually plunged in a sort of somno- 
lent revery which is like intoxication of the 
mind. His thoughts do not emerge from the 
embryonic state, but they come back with 
the persistence of the fixed idea in the brain 
of a man who has no ideas. His bureau always 
has the same book open at the same place. 
The parlor of his house was hung round with 
silk and luxuriously furnished many years ago. 
It has always lacked two arm-chairs, "which 
aren't done yet;" and this has been so since 
the first days of his marriage. A bronze can- 
delabrum, which is an object of art, has as a 
pendant a wretched copper candlestick, out of 
shape, humpbacked, soiled with tallow. 

This disorder disturbs no one in the house. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 95 

Manilof and his wife are enchanted with every- 
thing, — with themselves, with their children, 

with their neighbors, with the city of N . 

Every tchinovnik is the "most distinguished, 
the most lovable, the most honorable of men." 
People so prone to admiration and to praise 
melt into gush at the visit of their guest. He, 
in his turn, praises Manilofs merits to the 
skies, goes into ecstasies over the precocious 
intelligence of their two sons Alcides and 
Themistocles ; and when he has charmed them 
all by his delicate attentions, he takes Manilof 
aside, and asks if he has lost many peasants 
since the last census. The proprietor, in great 
perplexity as to what answer to give, summons 
his prikashchik, formerly a peasant, who has 
cut his beard and thrown his kaftan to the 
winds, a great friend of the feather-bed and 
fine down foot-warmers, godfather or relative 
of all the big-wigs of the village, a tyrant over 
the poor devils whom he loads down with fees 
and tasks. The chubby old fellow, who gets 
up at eight o'clock in the morning, and who 
gets up simply to put his red-copper samovar 
on the table, and then to tipple his tea like a 



96 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

gourmand for an hour and a half, has no greater 
knowledge than his master about the insignifi- 
cant question of the mortality of the serfs. 
"The number of the dead? That's something 
we don't take note of. How's that? — the 
number of the dead ? No one has had the idea 
of counting them, naturally.'' 

Tchitchikof asks to have an exact list made 
out, with the names, surnames, nicknames, 
dates of birth, color of eyes, tints of hair. 
When the prikashchik has gone, Tchitchikof 
comes to the delicate explanation. At first 
Manilof takes his guest to be crazy ; but his 
face has nothing about it that is not re-assuring. 
He still hesitates, in the fear of some illegality. 
The purchaser dispels this fear. The bill of 
sale will not say any thing about dead souls. 
" Dead ? Never ! We will have them entered 
as living ; they are so inscribed on the official 
registers. No one shall ever induce me to 
break the law. I respect it. I have suffered 
enough from my uprightness during my career 
as a tchinovnik. Duty first, the law above all 
things. That's the kind of man I am, and I 
shall die the same. When the law speaks, there 



NIKOLAI GOGOL, 97 

must be no objections ! " Manilof is therefore 
re-assured ; and when he is convinced that the 
crown has only to gain by this exchange of 
property, even though it be fictitious, he offers 
all his dead souls for nothing. He would like 
to have many other occasions to show his new 
friend "all the drawing of his heart, all the 
magnetism of his soul." The friend takes his 
departure, promising the precocious children 
some toys ; and " when the cloud of dust raised 
by the britchka had drifted away, Manilof came 
into the house again, sat down, and abandoned 
himself to the sweet thought that he had shown 
his crony a perfect amiability, such as might 
have been expected from his eminently benevo- 
lent and complaisant soul." 

Not all his negotiations come to this suc- 
cessful issue with such ease. In driving over 
to the house of the laconic giant Sabakevitch, 
the equipage gets off the track, and the car- 
riage is overturned directly in front of a coun- 
try-house where an old Russian lady, Mrs. 
Karabotchka, lives. As in the case of Mani- 
lof, the appearance of the landscape in some 
degree gives the clew to the character of the 



9 8 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

native. The landscape is little else than a 
nest for poultry. Fowls of every sort fill the 
court-yard, behind which stretch vegetable-gar- 
dens, variegated here and there with fruit-trees 
protected by great webs of thread. Amid this 
vulgarly utilitarian nature, rises a pole which 
ends in a bar shaped like a cross; and on 
the arm of this cross is nailed a nightdress, 
surmounted by a damaged bonnet belong- 
ing to " the lady and mistress of all this 
property." 

Tchitchikof does not waste so much polite- 
ness upon Nastasia Petrovna (these are the 
lady's given names) as upon Manilof. He is 
Russian ; that is to say, he possesses in perfec- 
tion all those shades of speech and all those 
different intonations by which it is possible to 
show the one with whom you are speaking, 
veneration, respect, deference, esteem, vulgar 
consideration, disdainful familiarity, and, de- 
scending still lower, all degrees of patron- 
age, even to the extreme limit of scorn. Ac- 
cordingly he opens his project in free-and-easy 
style. But the proposition shocks the worthy 
woman. "What do you want to do with my 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 99 

dead ? " she asks, fixing upon him two great 
eyes streaked with yellow saffron. She sus- 
pects some shrewd trick in this business ; and 
her obstinacy, characteristic of the narrow- 
minded but calculating baba, finally exasperates 
the purchaser, who gets carried away, pounds 
the floor with a cane-seated chair within his 
reach, and to the old woman's horror mingles 
the name of the Devil in his furious exclama- 
tions. These violent actions, however, have 
less effect than a promise deftly introduced 
into the conversation : " I wanted to buy of 
you your various farm products ' because I have 
charge of various crown contracts." This men- 
tion of the crown brings the old blockhead to 
terms. " Nu, yes, I consent. I am ready to sell 
them for fifty paper rubles. Only look, my 
father, at that question of supplies. If it hap- 
pens you want rye-flour or buckwheat, or grits, 
or slaughtered neats, then please don't forget 
me." One good turn deserves another. The 
contract is instantly drawn up; and Mrs. Kara- 
botchka, seeing her guest fetch forth from his 
travelling outfit a supply of newly stamped 

1 Khozyaistvcnmiie froduktui. 



IOO NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

paper, arranges to have him leave a package 
for five rubles in case of necessity. 1 

All this comedy would be well worth trans- 
lating word for word. The situation already 
treated in the preceding canto is here renewed 
with consummate art. The characters are de- 
veloped in broad light : the contrasts are for- 
cibly brought out ; the drawing is full of 
freedom in. its requisite vulgarity ; the coloring 
is full of brilliancy in its rather trivial bold- 
ness. This country scene is itself enclosed 
between two capital bits of narration, opening 
and ending the chapter or canto with a sym- 
metry of the most skilful effect. 

At the beginning of the episode comes the 
soliloquy of Selifan the coachman, with his 
horses, already mentioned ; the britchka's wan- 

1 ut Akhti! what nice stamped paper you have ! ' continued she, 
gazing at him, at his portfolio. And, indeed, there was not much 
stamped paper to be had then. * If you would only let me have a 
sheet ! I need it so much. It happens sometimes I want to write 
a petition to the court, and I haven't any thing fit to write on.' 

"Tchitchikof explained to her that this paper was not of that 
kind ; that it was designed for drawing up contracts in regard to serfs, 
and not for petitions. However, in order to accommodate her, he 
let her have a few sheets for a ruble" (not five rubles, as M. Dupuy 
translates it, mistaking the word meaning price (or Jive)* — N. II. D. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. IOI 

derings in a pouring rain, across roads torn up 
by the storm ; finally the catastrophe which 
sends the whole equipage to the bottom of a 
ditch into the mud. 

At the end of the canto we have the britch- 
ka's return guided by a little girl of the neigh- 
borhood, a sort of wild Indian with bare legs 
literally shod with fresh mire. Selifan drives 
his team with a silent care which makes a 
pointed contrast with his loquacious spirit the 
day before. The horses, especially the mottled 
one, miss his discourses ; for he substitutes for 
them a hail-storm of treacherous goads in the 
fat, pulp}', soft, delicate, and sensitive portions 
of their bodies. At last, when the carriage 
has emerged from the region of mud, and has 
passed all these roads, running, in every sense 
of the word, "like crawfish at market when 
they are allowed to escape from the bag;" 
and when the coachman has reached the high- 
way, and caught a glimpse of the public house, 
"he reined in his team, helped the little maiden 
to dismount, and, as he helped her, he looked at 
her for the first time. He muttered between 
his teeth, 'What muddy legs! hu| hu! hu ! all 



102 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

the way from here home, she will soil the clean 
grass!' Tchitchikof gave the little maiden a 
copper coin, about two kopeks : she turned 
her back quick as a flash, and off she went, 
starting with five or six mad gambols ; she 
was enchanted at the splendid gift, still more 
enchanted at having been allowed to sit on the 
coach-box of the britchka." 

At the public house Tchitchikof falls in with 
a character whom he has already met at the 
crown solicitor's at dinner, where his famil- 
iarity surprises him, less, however, than his 
skill at cards, and the suspicious way in which 
the other players watch his fingers. He is a 
terrible braggart, and he carries off the traveller 
willy-nilly. Once again the domain resembles 
the owner. Nozdref is a great hand for going 
to fairs, a mighty tippler, a mighty gambler, 
a mighty liar, or, as they say in Russia of these 
impudent improvisers, "a mighty maker of bul- 
lets." He is always ready to sell all his pos- 
sessions at a bargain. He sometimes wins at 
play, and he spends his gains in purchases of 
every sort. The booths at the fairs in a few 
hours absorb all his winnings. Generally he 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. IO3 

loses ; and, with the forlorn hope of getting 
back his money, he casts into the same hole 
his watch, his horses, and both carriage and 
coachman. Some friend has to carry him 
home in a simple short overcoat of Bokharian 
stuff, despoiled and shorn, but filled only 
with thoughts of having his revenge next 
market-day. This imbecile's country-house 
has nothing more remarkable than his ken- 
nels, where beasts of every race growl and 
bark. As to the mill, the clamp which tight- 
ens the mill-stone is missing. The fields lie 
fallow. Nozdrefs work-shop is adorned only 
with Turkish guns, swords, poniards ; add to 
that, pipes of every clay and of every size, 
and an old hand-organ. Here the negotia- 
tions about dead souls do not run smoothly. 
Nozdref treats his man as though he were a 
liar, a sharper : he wants to compel him to 
a bargain no less preposterous than disad- 
vantageous ; then he offers to put up souls at 
lansquenet. Tchitchikof, in spite of insults, 
accepts only a part of the queens ; and the 
game has hardly begun before he refuses to 
play in consequence of the strange pertinacity 



104 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

shown by his adversary's sleeve in pushing for- 
ward the cards which are not in the game. 
Hence a terrible quarrel. Nozdref seizes the 
suspicious player by the throat, and calls his 
valets to thrash him. The comedy is changing 
into a tragedy. The purchaser of souls is paler 
than one of his dead. At the critical moment 
a carriage drives up, and from it descends the 
dcus ex machina, a police-officer, who comes to 
arrest Nozdref for assault and battery com- 
mitted by him and some other gentlemen on 
the person of a Mr Maksimof, whom they had 
beaten on leaving some orgy. 

The procession of vices and absurdities 
sweeps on. Next to Nozdref, the rascally 
brutal gambler, appears Sabakevitch, the Rus- 
sian gormandizer, — a colossus with enormous 
feet, with a back as wide as the rump of a 
Viatkan horse, with arms and legs huge as the 
granite posts which fence in certain monu- 
ments ; a man capable of wrestling with a bear, 
himself a bear, as his surname Mikhail, which 
is the nickname of the bear in Russia, suffi- 
ciently indicates. 1 

1 See Merimee's novel entitled Lokis. — Author's note. 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 105 

After Sabakevitch comes the miser Plushkin, 
a portrait whose hideous relief outdoes the 
effect of Balzac's Grandet. The village where 
he lives still preserves traces of former wealth, 
rendering more noticeable and more frightful 
the state of degradation and wretchedness into 
which the present proprietor has let it fall. 
The appearance of the miser on his threshold, 
his sullen reception of the traveller, the charac- 
teristics of his dress and his person, the enu- 
meration of the treasures which fill his sheds, 
the utensils crowding his office, the bric-a-brac 
loading his what-not, the description of his 
stingy ways, the contrast with his wise and 
happy past, the account of his domestic trou- 
bles, and of his rapid transformation under the 
influence of anxiety and loneliness, — all this 
makes this canto not only a picturesque paint- 
ing, a most lively comedy, but, more than all, a 
psychological study as deep as it is novel. In 
fact, avarice may have been as well described in 
its effects; it had never before been so studied 
in its principles, and, as it were, determined in 
its essence. 

Plushkin has sold Tchitchikof all his dead 



106 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

souls, and all his runaway serfs into the bar- 
gain. The list of the different purchases al- 
ready concluded reaches a respectable length. 
The names, surnames, nicknames, description, 
and other particulars, complaisantly noted down 
by those who sell, give Tchitchikof the illusion 
of having actual property. His imagination 
brings all these dead to life. He knows their 
ways, their faults, their habits, the distinctive 
characteristics of each. The only thing that is 
left is to have all the purchases sanctioned by 
the tribunals. Now or never is the chance to 
show up in satire the Russian tchinovnik and his 
incurable corruption. The cunning tricks of 
the clerks, whose slightest service must be 
bought, the natchalnik 's collusion, the character 
of the witnesses, the method of blinding the 
chief of police as to the nature of the contract, 
— here would be the material for another 
comedy in the style of "The Rcvizor" 

Every thing comes out just as Tchitchikof 
desires. In the village, he marches from ova- 
tion to ovation : he seems at the height of his 
good fortune. But, unhappily for him, Nozdref 
meets him at the mayor's ball, and publicly and 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. IO7 

in a loud voice makes sport of him on account 
of his craze for purchasing dead souls. This 
mysterious word has its effect. Tchitchikof is 
shunned as a dangerous man. The tattle of a 
whole idle village ravins on his reputation. Jus- 
tice is stirred up : it imputes to him all sorts 
of misdemeanors and even crimes. True, these 
imputations almost instantly are shown to be 
false ; but public opinion does not make 
charges against an innocent man for nothing. 
Suspicion always hovers about him. Every 
townsman goes a little farther than what has 
been already supposed. One day the postmas- 
ter comes declaring that Tchitchikof is Capt. 
Kopei'kin. This Kope'ikin is a robber chieftain, 
known by his wooden leg and his amputated 
arm. It is needless to say that Tchitchikof 
possesses all his limbs. 

Finally Nozdref, who has done all the harm, 
makes partial reparation. He tells Tchitchikof 
what is thought and said about him in the city 

of N . The man of "acquisitions" has his 

britchka cleaned and greased, straps his valise, 
and gives Selifan his orders for their departure. 
Selifan scratches the nape of his neck at this 



108 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

order to depart. What did this expressive pan- 
tomime mean ? Did he regret the wine-room, 
and his friends the tipplers, he with the ttiliip 
thrown negligently over his shoulders ? Was 
he deep in some love-affair, and did he mourn 
the porte-coclihe, under the shelter of which he 
squeezed two whitish hands at the hour when 
the bandura-player, in red camisole, claws his 
instrument ? Did he merely turn a melancholy 
glance towards the kitchen with its savory per- 
fume of sauer-kraut, and look with dismay on 
the weariness of the cold, the wind, the snow, 
and the interminable roads, following this life 
of contemplation ? " His gesture might signify 
all that, and many other things ; for among the 
Russians the action of scratching the nape of 
the neck is not the indication of two or three 
ideas, limited in number, but rather of an infi- 
nite quantity of thoughts." 

They depart. A new Odyssey begins ; that is 
to say, a new series of visits, and a new gallery 
of portraits. This time the author seems to 
have desired to soften his satire, and to add to 
the critical portion of his work certain theories, 
or, at least, certain counsels. Taking as his 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. IO9 

text Andrei Tentyotnikof, — a sweet-tempered 
and easy-going gentleman, who is slowly con- 
suming away in the vague torment of a senti- 
mental life, — he propounds his ideas on edu- 
cation, and lays out his programme of studies 
in the fashion of Rabelais, his favorite author. 
In contrast to Andrei he places the charming 
figure of Julienne, daughter of the old general 
Betrishef. Those who blame Gogol for never 
having created an elegant and graceful heroine 
have not read the thirteenth canto of "Dead 
Souls." Never to be forgotten when once met 
is the dazzling amazon, whose portraiture thus 
begins : " The person so suddenly introduced 
was bathed and caressed by the light of heaven ; 
she was as straight and as agile as a rosewood 
javelin. " Andrei is in love with her. But this 
romance is scarcely begun before it is hidden 
from us, and in its place comes satire again. 
We fall back into vulgar life, and into the 
most beastly epicureanism, with the gastrono- 
mist Peetukof. This jovial fat-paunch has a 
splenetic neighbor. With good health, and 
eighty thousand rubles income, the handsome, 
gentle, and good Platonof is bored. He has only 



HO XIKOLAI GOGOL. 

this word on his tongue : ennui. His brother- 
in-law Konstantin is apparently the only one of 
these Russian grandees whom Gogol has been 
pleased to spare. Industrious as an ox, he de- 
mands of his serfs constant labor. " I have 
discovered," he says, " that when a man does 
not work, dreams come along, his brains run 
away, and he becomes a mere idiot." This 
proprietor has, moreover, no claims to noble 
descent. " He took very little thought about 
his genealogical tree, judging that the posses- 
sion of proofs was not worth the labor of 
research, and that such documents have no ap- 
plication to agriculture." Finally, he contented 
himself with speaking Russian without going 
round Robin Hood's barn, and, without any ad- 
mixture of French, in thorough Russian style. 

This wise man has made his property a model 
domain, and he would like to see the country 
peopled with good proprietors like himself. He 
lends Tchitchikof money to purchase an estate 
in the neighborhood. But we may conjecture 
that the adventurer will not settle down so 
soon. In fact, we are yet to see other ab- 
surd specimens ; for example, the fool Koshka- 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. Ill 

ref, who, though within two steps of ruin, plays 
with governmental forms. He has transformed 
his domain into a little state divided into bu- 
reaus, with such inscriptions as these : " Depot 
of Farm Utensils ; " " Central Bureau for the 
Settlement of Accounts ; " " Bureau of Rural 
Matters ; " " School of High Normal Instruc- 
tion;" etc. It is needless to say, that, through 
the fault of the employees, the bureaus do not 
work ; for the Bureau of Edifices has taken his 
last ruble, and the poor sovereign's ruin is 
rapidly drawing nigh. 

Finally, the spectacle on which the narrator 
longest holds our attention is that of the pov- 
erty whereto the various faults or vices, touched 
by our finger in this tale, bring the great ma- 
jority of the small proprietors of Russia. Klo- 
beyef has been ruined this ten years. He still 
lives, and his existence is a problem. To-day 
is a gala day, grand dinner, play by French 
actors : the next, not a morsel of bread in the 
larder. Any one would have hung himself, 
drowned himself, or put a bullet through his 
head. Klobeyef finds the means of keeping up 
this alternation of luxury and wretchedness. 



112 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

He is a well-bred, enlightened, intelligent man : 
he absolutely lacks common-sense. When he 
is in trouble, he opens some pious book ; and 
when the compassion of his old friends, or the 
charity of some strange lady on the lookout for 
good works, succeeds in rescuing him, for the 
time being, from the final tragedy, he ascribes 
praise to Providence, thanks the holy images, 
and begins to bite off from both ends this for- 
tune come from Heaven. 

With this portrait we must end the analysis 
of "Dead Souls/' The impression, as can be 
seen, is truly heart-rending. According to the 
author's own statement, " it is a picture of the 
universal platitude of the country/' The story 
is told, that the scoffer Pushkin, after hearing 
his friend Gogol read this romance, said to him, 
in a voice broken by emotion, " Good God ! the 
sad thing is our poor Russia." It is indeed this 
state of moral wretchedness which Gogol strove 
above all to make the Russian reader feel, even 
though he had to do so at the cost of his own 
popularity. 

I shall pass briefly over the last part of the 
romance, which i$ only an arrangement drawn 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 1 13 

from the author's notes. The adventurer is 
seen for the second time in the clutches of the 
law. He has forged a will, like Crispin in " Le 
Legataire ; " and he is only released from prison 
by the intercession of an old philanthropist, 
who finally succeeds in softening the governor- 
general's severity. Tchitchikof has agreed to 
become an honest man, or at least to marry, 
and to found a line of honest folk. 

It has been thought that in this violent but 
straightforward governor, " animated by healthy 
hatreds " as Alceste says, Gogol meant to pic- 
ture the Tsar Nicholas. Gogol belonged, in- 
deed, to an epoch when Russia as yet expected 
her salvation and delivery from above. How- 
ever, the tsar is not mentioned here more than 
elsewhere in "Dead Souls;" and the author, 
whose patriotism shines forth in so many places 
in the book, does not seem to have cared, as 
might have been expected, to personify the 
country in the emperor. I might adduce, in 
proof, all the passages where, by way of com- 
pensation, words about Russian soil, Russian 
horsemanship, Russian idiom, etc., bring out, 
through the ironical and trivial prose of the 



1 14 NIKOLAI GOGOL. 

satire, the poet's passionate lyric utterances 
which were revealed to us in his first writings. 
Here is a fragment which deserves to be en- 
shrined in an anthology along with the piece 
about the Dniepr or the " Ukraine night : " — 
" Russia ! Russia ! from the beautiful distant 
places where I dwell ' I see thee, I see thee 
plainly, O my country ! Thy nature is nig- 
gardly. In thee there is nothing to charm or 
to awe the spectator. . . . No : there is nothing 
splendid in thee, Russia, nothing marvellous ; all 
is open, desert, flat. Thy little cities are scarce 
visible in thy plains, like points, like specks. 
Nothing in thee is seductive, nothing even de- 
lights the eye. What secret mysterious force, 
then, draws me to thee ? Why does thy song, 
melancholy, fascinating, restless, resounding 
throughout all thy length and breadth, from one 
sea to the other, ring forever in my ears ? What 
does this song contain ? Whence come these 
accents and these sobs which find their echo in 
the heart ? What are these dolorous tones 

1 Gogol was living at that time in Italy. Pie wrote while abroad 
the second part of Dead Souls, lie left Russia after the publication 
of the first part. — Authors Note, 



NIKOLAI GOGOL. 1 1 5 

which strike deep into the soul, and wake the 
memories ? Russia, what desirest thou of me ? 
What is this obscure, mysterious bond which 
unites us to each other? Why dost thou look 
at me thus ? Why does all that thou con- 
tainest fix upon me this expectant gaze ? My 
thought remains mute before thy immensity. 
This very infinity, to what forebodings does it 
give rise ? Since thou art limitless, canst thou 
not be the mother country of thoughts whose 
grandeur is immeasurable ? Canst thou not 
bring forth giants, thou who art the country of 
mighty spaces? This thought of thy immeas- 
urable extent is reflected powerfully in my soul, 
and an unknown force makes its way into the 
depths of my mind. My eyes are kindled with 
a supernatural vision. What dazzling distances ! 
What a marvellous mirage unknown to earth ! 
O Russia ! " 




I VAX S. TURGENIEF. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 
I. 

Ivan Turgenief was born at Orel on the 
28th of October, 181 8. This date, given by 
Turgenief himself in a letter to the Russian 
journalist Suvarin, corresponds to the 9th of 
November in our calendar. 

His father, Sergei Nikolayevitch, and his 
mother, Varvara Petrovna, died early. 1 He 
was brought up by his grandmother, a Russian 
lady of the old school, haughty by nature 
and of despotic disposition. The portrait of 
this " severe and choleric " banana is found 
sketched in vigorous outlines in the little story 
"Punin and Baburin." This story, says Tur- 
genief in the letter which I have just men- 
tioned, "contains much biography." 

Turgenief s grandmother lived in the coun- 
try, on an estate a short distance from the city 

1 This is a mistake. His father died in 1835 > anc * n ^ s motner 
reached the age of seventy, dying in 1850. 

117 



Il8 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

of Orel. Here the child became passionately 
fond of nature. From the age of twelve he 
entered into intimate relationship with trees 
and flowers; and he felt, when in contact with 
them, impressions whose vividness remains 
after more than forty years in the deeply 
stirred remembrances of the mature man. 

" The garden belonging to my grandmother's 
property was a large park of ancient date. On 
one side it sloped towards a pond of running 
w r ater, wherein lived not only gudgeon and 
tench, but also salvelines, the famous salvelines, 
those little eels which are found scarcely any- 
where nowadays. At the head of this pond 
grew a dense rose-bed; higher up, on both 
sides of the ravine, stretched a thicket of 
vigorous bushes, — hazel, elder, honeysuckle, 
black-thorn, in the lower part encroached upon 
by tall grass and lovage. Amid the clumps of 
trees, but only here and there, appeared very 
small bits of emerald-green lawn of fine and 
silken grass, prettily mottled with the dainty 
pink, yellow, lilac caps of those mushrooms 
called russules ; and there the golden balls of 
the great celandine hung in luminous patches. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 119 

There in springtime were heard the songs of 
nightingales, the whistling of blackbirds, and 
the cuckoos' call. It was always cool there, 
even during the warmest days of summer; 
and I loved to bury myself in those depths 
where I had my favorite hiding-places, myste- 
rious, known to myself alone — or at least so 
I imagined." 

Prepared by this beneficent influence of 
colors, perfumes, and the sounds of rustic life, 
the child's moral education was directed, with- 
out anybody's knowledge, and influenced for all 
time, by the presence of two outlandish servants, 
flitting members of the high-born lady's house- 
hold. One of them was a "philanthropic and 
philosophical plebeian," destined to die in Sibe- 
ria ; the other, a sort of innocent enthusiast, a 
great reader of Russian epics then out of fashion. 
The former sowed in the young Turgenief's 
soul the seeds of a liberalism which will bear 
fruit in the most manly resolves ; the latter 
kindled in the lad's lively imagination a poetic 
flame whose heat and glory will shine out in a 
score of masterpieces. 

Towards the age of thirteen, the young Ivan 



120 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

was removed from these influences. He was 
given two tutors, one French and the other 
German. Having obtained his diploma as can- 
didate in philology, he went to Berlin to finish, 
or rather begin anew, his studies in the hu- 
manities ; and he brought them to a close by 
plunging into the current of the Hegelian phi- 
losophy. He came back to Russia converted 
to that " occidentalism'' which we shall define 
later when we study Turgeniefs political theo- 
ries. 

He made his debict as a writer in 1843, with 
a little poem, "Parasha." ' The critic Bielinsky 
gave it such praise that it covered the author 
with confusion. Towards the end of his life, 
Turgenief criticised his poetry with a severity 
that was absolutely sincere. Even at this 

1 Turgenief says in his Recollections : " About Easter, 1843, m 
Petersburg, an event took place, in itself indeed of small importance, 
and long ere this swallowed up in perfect oblivion. It was this : A 
short poem entitled Parasha, by a certain T. L., was published. That 
T. L. was I. With this poem I began my literary career." He says 
further that Bielinsky ; s praise was so extravagant that he felt more 
confusion than pleasure. "I could not believe it," he adds; "and 
when in Moscow the late I. V. Kireyevski came to me with congratu- 
lations, I hastened to disown my child, declaring that I was not the 
author."— N. II. D. 



IVAN TURG&NIEF. 121 

period, he set as little value on his verses as 
though he had already shown his ability in a 
prose masterpiece. The masterpiece appeared 
three years later, in 1846. The first story in 
" The Annals of a Sportsman/' 1 " Khor and 
Kalinuitch, ,, was published in the Sovremennik 
(" Contemporary ") ; and at a single stroke Tur- 
genief's fame reached a height which will never 
be surpassed by any of his great works. 2 

[Most of] the other stories in Turgeniefs 
first collection were written abroad. The au- 
thor came back to Russia in 185 1, but only 
to leave it again two years later. He will 
still have a domicile there, and above all he 
will come back regularly to keep up his rela- 
tions, and touch foot to earth ; but it may be 
said that after 1863 he made only flying visits 
to his country. The Russians have heaped 
reproaches on Turgenief for this abandonment 
of his native soil. It has always been easily ex- 
plained. There was, at least primarily, a sort 
of state reason. In 1852, owing to an article 

1 Zapiski Okhotnika. 

2 Yet Bielinsky wrote him : M * Khor ' gives promise that you will 
be a remarkable writer — in the future." — N. H. D. 



122 IVAN TURGEXIEF. 

on Gogol's death, Turgenief got into difficulty 
with the imperial censorship, which ended in 
a month of close imprisonment, and in the 
writer being interned at his estate. After two 
years of solitude and work, Turgenief felt the 
need of "gaining freedom, the knowledge of 
himself." He acquired these conditions, outside 
of which it was impossible for him to write and 
to struggle, at the price of life in a foreign 
country." J 

But behold what was not known, and what 
was revealed only by the posthumous publica- 
tion of Turgenief s letters. This Russian who 
made his home abroad, who dwelt twenty years 
in France, and died in the very heart of Paris, 

1 Turgenief says in his Recollections : u I should certainly never 
have written The Annals of a Sportsman if I had staid in Russia. I 
was in a state of mind singularly analogous to Gogol's, who just about 
this time wrote his best pages about Russia from ' the beautiful dis- 
tance.' " The article on Gogol's death was not passed by the Peters- 
burg censor, but was admitted by the Moscow censor, and appeared in 
the Vyedomosti in March, 1852. Nevertheless, the article was con- 
strued as a violation of the law : " I was put under partial arrest for 
a month, and then sent into domicile in the country, where I lived two 
years. . . . But all for the best. . . . My being under arrest, and in 
the country, proved to my undeniable advantage : it brought me close 
to those sides of Russian life which, in the ordinary course of things, 
would probably have escaped my observation." — N. H. D. 



IVAN TURG&NIEF. 12$ 

was overwhelmed during his forced or voluntary 
exile with the blackest melancholy of homesick- 
ness, and during the last part of his life suffered 
even the sharpest torment. 

He did not succeed in acclimating himself, 
either at Baden Baden, in spite of the charm 
of the situation where his poet's glance first 
rested ; or at Paris, where he was to be en- 
chained by the bonds of love which he himself 
called " imperishable, indissoluble." It may be 
asked, in regard to this well-known friendship, 
whether Turgenief, exiled from Russia by his 
desire for liberty, succeeded in avoiding all the 
forms of dependence. It is a problem which I 
leave to the most inquisitive to settle. I con- 
fine myself to pointing out in Turgenief the 
expressions which now and again betray his 
weariness of exile, his restlessness as of a North- 
ern bird, a captive swan or eider, languishing, 
mourning with regret for its cold natal seas. 
" I am condemned to a Bohemian life, and I 
must make up my mind never to build me a 
nest." " In a foreign atmosphere," he writes 
once more, " I decompose like a frozen fish in 
time of thaw. ... I shall certainly come back 
to Russia in the spring." 



124 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

During the winter of 1856 Turgenief made 
this promise to return ; and he repeats it many 
times, as though to assure himself further ex- 
cuses for keeping it. From that time he knows 
all the disappointments of a wandering life ; and 
to express the idea of not feeling at home where 
one is, he uses a word of rare power : " Say 
what you will, but in a foreign country a man 
is dislocated: you are needful to no one, and 
no one is needful to you." Far from growing 
feeble, this painful impression will increase as 
time goes on ; the flame of regret, instead of 
going out or dying down, will get fresh vigor, 
and break forth in new developments. 

First it is the family instinct, which wakens 
and which speaks very eloquently at that am- 
biguous hour when youth begins to withdraw, 
and when, like the foliage in autumn, one feels 
a premonitory shiver, harbinger of the wintry 
winds. "Anenkof married," says Turgenief 
smiling, " is handsomer than ever." " Get thee 
a wife," he writes seriously to another of his 
friends: "it is the one thing needful." 

Then there is also the acute feeling of the 
impoverishment of the creative faculty, the very 



IVAN TURG&NIEF. 125 

disturbing realization or apprehension of a sort 
of literary cinema due to the deprivation of the 
desired climate with its inspiring horizons, with 
its atmosphere filled with vivifying breezes and 
suggestive sounds. " I will admit, if you please, 
that the talent with which I was endowed by 
nature has not grown smaller ; but I have noth- 
ing on which to set it to work. The voice is 
rested : there is naught to sing, so it is better 
to be silent. And I have nothing to sing, 
because I live away from Russia." " Living 
abroad," he says in another place, "the fountain 
from which my inspiration sprang has dried 
up." 

Finally, more than all, it is the lofty sadness 
and the noble remorse at not being on hand, at 
not mingling more intimately in the troublous, 
dangerous drama which is enacting on Russian 
soil. " In fact," Turgenief writes his friend the 
great author, Lyof Tolstoi, "Russia is now pass- 
ing through serious and gloomy times ; but 
it is for that very reason that at this moment 
one feels the gnawing of conscience at living 
like a foreigner." 

And so this existence which seemed to be 



126 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

ruled by a certain indifference, a sort of elegant 
and fortunate dilettanteism, was early crossed, 
and to the very end disturbed, by fits of melan- 
choly and splenetic depression, the secret of 
whose existence few people, I am inclined to 
think, ever discovered. Who seeing Turgenief 
unaffectedly smiling, in a humor not exactly 
sportive, but sweet, even, and obliging, would 
have suspected that after an interview with his 
Parisian friends, for whom he saved all the 
flower of his wit, he would shut himself up 
to confide his heart-secret to pages destined to 
fall only under the softened and by no means 
mocking eyes of his old Russian comrades ? 

One can easily imagine the sympathy roused 
in a Polonsky, for example, by passages such as 
this : "The chill of old age every day penetrates 
farther into my soul : it takes entire possession 
of it. The absolute indifference which I find in 
me makes me tremble for myself. I can now 
repeat with Hamlet, — 

1 How stale, flat, and unprofitable 
Seems me that life ! ' « 

1 A misquotation, of course, of 
" How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
Seems to me all the uses of this world! " — N. H. D. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. \2J 

Perhaps this mood will pass ; or, if it lasts, per- 
haps I shall succeed in lignifying, and in that 
case, it is all the same." 

Another day he tears out from his private 
journal this page, the disappearance of which 
is to be deeply regretted : " Again I am at my 
table, and in my soul it is gloomier than the 
gloomiest night. Thus, like a moment, passes 
the day, empty, aimless, colorless. A space to 
give a passing glance, and, lo ! it is bedtime 
again. No right to life, no desire to live. 
Nothing to do, nothing to expect, nothing to 
hope for. . . . Thou speakest of halos of glory, 
and of enchanting tones. O my friend ! we 
are the fragments of a vase broken long ago. ,, 

When once the straits of old age were 
crossed, Turgenief enjoyed a few years of rela- 
tive calm, of less bitter resignation. It was 
the time of his intimacy with George Sand and 
Flaubert. They both died. Illness falls upon 
Turgenief himself, and nails him pitilessly to 
the land of exile. 

From the day when the way of return is 
cut off, the " occidental " is seized once more 
with the agony of homesickness for the mother 



128 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

country. His eyes and his heart are fastened 
immovably on the corner of Russia whither all 
the memories of childhood and youth draw him. 
Unable to see his village of Spaskoe, he sends 
his best friends to it, and establishes them there. 
He begs them to give him endless details about 
the peasants, about the women, the school, the 
chapel, the hospital. He worries about the 
garden, and urges Mrs. Polonskai'a to look upon 
its most humble products with "the eyes of 
the master." He feels more keenly than ever 
the value of what he has lost. In addition to 
his ever renewed and lively regrets comes the 
feeling of bitterness and mourning which is 
born of the irreparable. His country calls him, 
and draws him with such force, that he has 
the sensation of a great " tearing asunder." 
That is the expression to which it is necessary 
to hold fast. It is calculated to surprise even 
those who had the good fortune often to meet 
Ivan Sergeyevitch ; but what regret it ought 
to cause those who, deceived by the way in 
which Turgcnief persisted in living far away 
from the Russian land, cruelly upbraided him 
for having forgotten his country ! 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 1 29 

Turgenief was so far from forgetting Russia, 
that he went back almost every year ; and he 
wrote almost all his works there. The critics 
scarcely had any suspicion of such a thing. 
They attacked Turgenief s later novels, bring- 
ing up against them his residence abroad. 
" How could he know Russia any more ? He 
no longer lives there." Turgenief was indig- 
nant at this objection, which " that old woman 
called the public " persisted in hurling at him. 
He answered this argument once for all, in 
terms which must be quoted: "The objection 
can only be made to what I have published 
since 1863. Until that time, — that is, until my 
forty-fifth year, — I lived in Russia, scarcely 
going out of the country, except the years from 
1848 to 1850. During just those years I wrote 
'The Annals of a Sportsman.' On the other 
hand, ' Rudin/ ' The Nest of Gentlemen,' ' On 
the Eve,' and ' Fathers and Sons ' were written 
in Russia. But that makes no difference to the 
old woman. Her mind is already made up." 

To be a little more precise, "Rudin" was 
published in 1855. "A Nest of Gentlemen" 1 

1 Dvoryanskaye Gnyczdo, an untranslatable title. A Nest of 
Nobles or Courtiers or Gentlemen fairly expresses it. 



13° IVAN TURGENIEF. 

appeared in 1859 [1858 ?], and the year 1862 
was distinguished by the appearance of "Fath- 
ers and Sons." Better than any one, Turgenief 
understood the necessity of writing nothing 
without his models before him ; and he went 
to seek for them where they were to be found. 
Turgenief s correspondence shows these scru- 
ples in a score of places, and especially in regard 
to " Fathers and Sons." Having once con- 
ceived the plan of the work, the novelist has 
no rest until he finds himself in Russia. There 
only can he imagine, create, or, to speak more 
accurately, reproduce what he sees in real life. 
His pen, which refused to move as long as 
he was abroad, runs and flies over the paper. 
The sight of familiar landscapes refreshes the 
parched brain : inspiration flows. 

Between the romance of " Fathers and Sons," 
and that of " Smoke," which was published in 
1867, during the period when the Russian writer 
was an habitual resident of Baden Baden, 1 ap- 
peared quite a large number of shorter stories 
and tales of less pretension, but not of less 

1 " In 1863 Ivan Sergeyevitch bought a plat of land at Baden 
Baden, built a house on it, and lived there until 1S70." — Polevoi. 



IVAN turg£nief. 13 1 

value. There is more than one masterpiece 
of sentiment or imagination in " Apparitions," 
in " Strange Stories/' " Spring Waters," " Liv- 
ing Relics." Not all these collections preceded 
" Smoke," but they came shortly before or 
shortly after it. 

Between "Smoke" and "Virgin Soil," Tur- 
geniefs last great novel, passes a period of 
nearly ten years. The cause of this long 
silence was the alienation which had arisen 
between the writer and his public. Russian 
readers had already begun to show their dis- 
satisfaction with " Fathers and Sons," and the 
causes of this displeasure deserve to be closely 
examined. We shall return to them in the 
course of this study. The spitefulness of the 
critics was let loose against the very satirical 
romance "Smoke;" other works, such as "The 
King Lear of the Steppe," did not even have 
the success of causing scandal, and were 
"damned with faint praise." "That," said 
Turgenief, u for an author who is growing old, 
is worse than a fiasco. It is the best proof 
that it is time to stop, and I am going to stop." 

In such a resolution, there were other mo- 



I3 2 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

tives besides pique. Turgenief felt weary, 
and, as it were, short of inspiration or of sub- 
jects. In the intervals between the recupera- 
tive journeys which we have mentioned, he was 
obliged to nourish himself on his own sub- 
stance. He knew that to suspend them, or 
even to postpone them too long, was at the 
risk of losing his strength and wasting away 
even to consumption. " I am compelled, like 
a bear in winter, to suck my paw ; and thus it 
is that nothing comes forth." 

The weariness disappeared, the pique wore 
away, and gradually this firm resolution to enjoy 
rest and absolute silence was shaken. Turge- 
nief finally even found excellent reason for re- 
suming the pen. It was necessary, not to blot 
out, but to complete, the effect of " Fathers and 
Sons " by writing another romance, which this 
time should clear up misunderstandings, and 
put the author in the position and in the rank 
that he felt he ought to hold. This romance, 
"Virgin Soil," 1 did not appear till 1876; but 

-, the Russian title, means merely ?ieu>, — one of the words, 
by the way, showing the affinity of Russian with Latin, English, and 
the other Indo-European languages, — and is suggestive not only cf 
new land, but of new people and new ideas. — N. II. D. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 133 

almost two years beforehand Turgenief was 
talking of it, thinking about it, and working 
at it. It can be seen in his correspondence, 
that the work is in some degree taking shape ; 
and under each abstract formula one can 
already detect the outlines of a character who 
will be the realization of it. 

It is easily understood how Turgenief, who 
expected so much from this last work, who 
thought that he had put into it the best of 
his talent, and reached the culmination of his 
creative faculty, was disappointed and discour- 
aged to receive once more only reproaches and 
blame. " This time," he says, "it is my last 
original work. Such is my decision, and it is 
irrevocable. ... I may possibly busy myself 
still with translations. I am contemplating 
1 Don Quixote ' and Montaigne." In vain opin- 
ion calms down, changes base, turns to praise 
and admiration : he remains firm in his design 
of staying in retreat, and of "joining the vet- 
erans." Indeed, for a few months at least, he 
seems to drop this implement of the writer, 
"which he has used for thirty years." 

He travels abroad, in England ; and quickly 



134 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

finds himself too well known, too much en- 
tertained, too much exhibited. This excess of 
glory is incompatible with his modesty. 

Was it the delight in his visit to Russia in 
the spring of 1878, was it the joy of renewing 
long -interrupted relations of intimacy with 
Count Lyof Tolstoi' ? At all events, Turgenief 
again finds literary work to his taste. At first, 
it is true, he is seen occupying himself only 
with the work of others. He wishes to do for 
Tolstoi* the same service in France, as for Flau- 
bert in Russia, by popularizing their works in 
translation. Or he publishes Pushkin's corre- 
spondence, and supervises a superb edition of 
the complete., works of his favorite poet. 

He writes. Bougival his " Song of Triumphant 
Love," which he regretfully allows to be printed, 
and which is this time hailed as a marvel. He 
makes a selection of his "Poems in Prose." 
He puts some personal reminiscences in the 
form of short stories; among others, "The 
Hopeless Man." He already passes beyond 
the horizon of life, — which is ending for him 
amid the most cruel sufferings, — by writing 
that half-real vision entitled "The Morrow of 
Death." 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 135 

Turgenief, by these short works, endeavored 
to get himself into the mood of writing another 
great work. He was already beginning to 
speak of it to his friends ; he explained the 
subject ; he had, perhaps, blocked out his plan ; 
and since we know his habits of work, and his 
method, we are safe in adding that he had con- 
ceived the principal types, that he had seen the 
majority of the characters pass and halt before 
his eyes. In this romance, Turgenief intended 
to compare the Russian with the French gre-\ 
vistes or anarchists. We see it is the subject 
which Zola had the ambition to take up in 
" Germinal ; " and, in spite of the popularity of 
the work, I may be allowed to believe that this 
subject still remains to be treated. 

The idea of this great romance must have 
been suggested to Turgenief s mind, as a con- 
sequence of his almost triumphal journey in 
Russia, on the occasion of the Pushkin festi- 
val. A few years had sufficed absolutely to 
change the feelings of the younger generation 
in Russia. The popularity which the author of 
"The Annals of a Sportsman"" so suddenly won 
was restored to him after a pretty long period 



136 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

of alienation, and at last beatified the author 
of "Virgin Soil." The enthusiastic reception of 
the Moscow students filled his soul with the 
emotion of unexpected joy, and the ovation 
which he received had for him all the value of 
an improbable result. A Russian who was very 
near to Turgenief told me that, on this occa- 
sion, he found only a few hesitating and broken 
words to reply to the speeches of the orators, 
the leaders of this young generation; but he 
had the moistened eyes and the smile of a happy 
man. 

Full of gratitude for this eleventh-hour hom- 
age, he would have been glad to express his 
thankfulness in his own manner ; and doubtless 
the new work would have translated it. His 
illness put a stop to his project. On the 
8th of April, 1882, Turgenief writes to Mrs. 
Polonska'fa to inform her of the physician's diag- 
nosis in regard to what they call his angina 
pectoris, or his gouty neuralgia of the heart. 
The term was not accurate. It is known that 
Turgenief died of cancer of the spinal marrow. 
Whatever the trouble was, the torment of it 
became atrocious, and the suffering which the 



IVAN TURG&NIEF. 137 

invalid underwent lasted more than a year. 
He bore this slow agony with great sweetness. 
His complaints were rare, and they were for the 
most part hidden under a veil of irony which 
robbed them of every shade of bitterness. 

Pinched by pain as by a vise, he still found 
the time and the power to address comforting 
raillery to those who were sadder than himself. 
"For your consolation," he wrote to one of his' 
friends, " I wish to quote one of Goethe's re- 
marks, made just before his death. It would 
seem as if he at least had to satiety all of the 
happiness that life can give. Think what a 
pitch of glory he reached, loved by women, and 
hated by fools ; think that he had been trans- 
lated even into Chinese ; that all Europe was 
setting out in pilgrimage to salute him ; that 
Napoleon himself said of him, ' There is a 
man ! ; think that our Russian critics, the Uv- 
arofs and others, burned incense under his 
nose : and yet, at the age of eighty-two, he de- 
clared that during his long life he had not been 
happy a quarter of an hour all told. Then 
for you and me it is the will of God, isn't it ? 
Suppose the perfect health which Goethe always 



I3 8 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

enjoyed is lacking to us, still he was bored. 
. . . But what is to be done about it ? " 
On the 3d of July, 1883, Turgenief with fee- 
ble hand, and at the cost of cruel pangs, wrote 
in pencil the following unsigned letter to his 
friend the great novelist Lyof Tolstoi' : " It is 
long since I have written you, for I have been 
and I am literally on my death-bed. It is im- 
possible for me to recover : it is not within 
the limits of thought. I write you simply to 
tell you that I am happy to have been your 
contemporary, and to express to you my last 
and most sincere request : my friend, return 
to literary work ! This talent of yours came to 
you from the source whence come all our 
gifts. Ah ! how happy I should be if my 
prayer were to have the effect upon you so 
deeply desired ! As for me, I am a dead man. 
The doctors do not even know what name 
to give my ailment. Gouty neuralgia of the 
stomach ; no walking, no eating, no sleeping. 
Bah ! it is tiresome to repeat all this. My 
friend, great writer of the Russian land, hear 
my supplication. Let me know if you receive 
this slip of paper, and allow me once more to 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 139 

press you closely in my embrace, — you, your 
wife, and all your family. I cannot write you 
more, I am weary." 

Turgenief died a month later, on Monday, 
Sept. 3, 1883. 

Turgeniefs features are so well known that 
it seems unnecessary to sketch them in his 
biography. One of his characters, the gigantic 
Karlof, thus defined the men of his race : " We 
are all born with light hair, brilliant eyes, and 
pale faces ; for we have sprung up under the 
snow." Turgenief himself had a good share 
of these race characteristics. But in France 
the majority of people knew the good giant 
only after he was well along in life, and when 
he already had the aspect of one of those ven- 
erable kings of whom the poet speaks : — 
. . . Nosco crines i7ica,7iaqiie menta. 

Turgenief was of a very honest, very obli- 
ging, and very affable nature. 1 Those who met 

1 His generosity was more than princely ; not even the palpable im- 
positions of his impecunious countrymen caused him to clasp his ever- 
open purse. It is related that a Russian family residing in Paris 
made frequent applications to this abundant fountain. Turgenief saw 
» through their wiles, but let the stream still flow. The little daughter 
of the family showed some musical talent, and Turgenief undertook 



14° IVAN TURGENIEF. 

him saw him to the best advantage at moments 
when he allowed himself to talk with a charm- 
ing frankness. He talked deliciously, with 
abundance of feeling and a fluency of expres- 
sion, which went with him even when he spoke 
in French. He enchanted those who listened 
to him in his moments of enthusiasm : always 
lively and original, his conversation then be- 
came passionate and brilliant, even lyrical. 
Listening to this stream of ideas and words hur- 
rying in eager floods, not noisily, from the lips 
of this old man of heroic mould and structure, 
one involuntarily thought of some Homeric 
bard. There was also "the harmony of the 
cicadas" and "all the sweetness of honey" in 
the voice of the Nestor of the steppes. 

her education. It happened that there was a very exclusive school in 
Paris ; and one fine day the ambitious mother came and besought their 
Maecenas to use his influence to have the young girl admitted where 
no foreigner was allowed. Turgenief was at last a little nettled, and 
in epigrammatic Russian he said, " Make her either a candle for the 
Lord, or an ash-scraper for the Devil" (Bogn svyetchu Hi Tchoriu 
katchcrgn).— N. H. D. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. I4 1 



II. 

Was Turgenief only an artist, only a dilet- 
tante ? 

We must give up this false definition which 
his enemies wished to become current, and 
which his friends even have been too willing 
to let go with contravention. Superficial critics 
deny in him all capacity, all enlightenment, on 
the questions of social order : they have gone 
so far as to say that in these respects he has 
neither teachings nor opinion. Certain fanatics, 
young or old, the Pisarefs, the Dostoyevskys, 
have taken it upon them to advance this pre- 
text for denying him the right to write and to 
print his works, and to be read as they are and 
more than they are. 

It is true to say that Turgenief never laid 
down, or even sketched out, a programme ; that 
he never made public speeches, that he did not 
peddle interviews, that he did not lucubrate 
leading articles for the editorial pages of jour- 



I 



I4 2 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

nals. What am I saying ? Perhaps he did not 
even reply to a sensational toast during his 
active life ! Many persons obtain and grant the 
title of political man only by this test. In 
their judgment, Turgenief was not one. 

As for believing that Turgenief had in politi- 
cal matters no definite opinions, or keen sym- 
pathies, or profound views, or well-digested 
purposes, it takes a pretty strong dose of 
passion or of naivete to accept and to pro- 
mulgate this mistake. Those who have read 
his works carefully suspected it ; those who 
were in his intimate circle had no question 
about it : but no scepticism in this regard could 
withstand the revelations of his correspondence. 

We know what popularity the Slavophile 
party gained from the moment of its birth. 
The declamations of the Pogodins and the 
Aksakofs against " occidental rot/' their dithy- 
rambs in honor of the virtues of the Slavic 
race, their childish programmes pretending to 
put the Russian people on the right track, and 
to free it from the old vestment of foreign ideas 
and habits which Peter the Great had swaddled 
it with, — all this specious rhetoric, flattering 



IVAN- TURGENIEF. 143 

at once the national vanity, ignorance, and 
indolence, found in Turgenief from his early 
youth a decided enemy. His conviction as an 
occidental, which was the foundation of all his 
other convictions, could not be shaken either 
by the constant effort of years or by the sudden 
shock of the most varied events. 

But what was the characteristic of this occi- 
dentalism ? Did it go so far as to dislike the 
special features of the Russian people, and 
desire to extirpate the individuality of the race, 
as one would demand the excision of a tumor 
or the extirpation of a wart ? Turgenief was 
too proud of being a Russian, not to have a 
legitimate share in the development of these 
peculiarities of the national type ; but, accord- 
ing to his own words, it was repugnant to him 
"to feel any vanity in this sort of exclusiveness, 
in whatever sphere it was manifested, pure art 
or politics. " In his eyes, Slavophilism was anV 
artificial entity, a sort of hollow edifice, con-* 
structed on foreign models and in imitation of 
the German gejnius. 

He could not reconcile himself to the idea 
of artificially isolating Russia from the rest of 



144 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

Europe, and of shutting her up in a sort of quar- 
antine, where, in order to be free from foreign 
influences, the result would be that the natal 
air would not preserve its purity, but would 
grow vitiated and rarefied. And with still 
greater reason, he regarded as puerile the 
thought of giving new life to the European 
organism by the infusion of the Slavic element. 
This ambition of grafting the Russian shoot on 
the aged wood of other races tore from him pro- 
testations of very expressive irony. " I cannot 
accustom myself to this view of Aksakofs, that 
it is necessary for Europe, if she would be 
saved, to accept our orthodox religion. " Every 
policy that adopted this narrow principle seemed 
to him worthy of reprobation, at least in its 
principle. "In freeing the Bulgarians we ought 
to be guided to this step, not because they are 
Christians, but because the Turks are massa- 
cring and robbing them. ,, "All that is human 
is dear to me," he says again : " Slavophilism 
is as foreign to me as every other orthodoxy.' ' 

In bringing these habits of moderation to 
his judgments of the acts of the government, 
and of the men who helped, who extolled, 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 145 

who blamed, who clogged its action, Turgenief 
might have expected to cause dissatisfaction, 
and to rouse for the most part only murmurs. 
Early in point of fact, and even to the end of 
his career, Turgenief is the object of violent 
attacks from the opposite party. At the very 
moment when the younger generation of Rus- 
sians felt that they were travestied by him in 
" Fathers and Sons," and when Tchernuishev- 
sky, the author of the famous romance "What 
is to be Done ? M l turns to his own profit the 
misunderstandings caused by the appearance 
of the hero Bazarof; Turgenief, for having 
created this same Bazarof, for having refused 
to exaggerate or blacken his character, makes 
for himself irreconcilable enemies -in the re- 
actionary party. He quarrels with Katkof, the 
officious journalist, the confidant of the heir- 
apparent, the inspirer of that retrograde policy 
which has prevailed in Russia of late years. 
"When I left 'The Russian Messenger' (Russki 
Vyestnik), Katkof sent me word that I did not 
know what it was to have him for an enemy. 

1 Tchto Dyelat) a translation of which is published by T. Y. 
Crowell & Co., under the title A Vital Question. 



14-6 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

He is trying, therefore, to show me. Let 
him do his best. My soul is not in his 
power." 

No consideration of interest, no low ambition 
for popularity, could have decided Turgenief to 
deviate from this line of conduct. We remem- 
ber the quite barren movement of agitation 
started a few years ago by those young people 
who called themselves, somewhat naively, "the 
new men." A lady who was one of their sym- 
pathizers sends Turgenief a bundle of docu- 
ments : it is the confession of one of the 
representatives of this progressive generation. 
Turgenief finds in this jumble of prose and 
verse only two characteristics, — an intoxicated, 
delirious self-conceit, and boundless incapacity 
and ignorance. It is vain to make allowance 
for time of life, and to attribute a part of their 
faults to the extreme youth of these individuals 
puffed up with a mighty sense of their small 
importance. Under it all there lies " only fee- 
bleness of thought, absence of all knowledge, 
a scantiness of talent verging on poverty." 
He does not put his unfavorable judgment 
under any sort of subterfuge or oratorical 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 147 

disguise: his frankness costs him a storm of 
bitter criticisms. 

Yet Turgenief is the very same man who will 
receive in Paris other young people, with still 
more trenchant opinions, still more angular 
forms ; and " in their presence," he says elo- 
quently, " I, old man that I am, I open my 
heart, because I feel in them the 'real presence/ 
and force, and talent, and mind." These virtues 
attracted him and disarmed him, no matter in 
what class of people or in what group of think- 
ers he found them. Thus he is seen giving 
the patronage of his name, and the cover of his 
authority, to the first work on the newspaper 
Le Temps of a young Russian, treated by the 
home government as a dangerous character. 
To punish Turgenief for this audacious deed, 
the minister causes him to be insulted, slan- 
dered by a paid scribbler. " Verily, among us," 
writes Turgenief, "many shameful things are 
exposed to God's air, like this vile article of 
the rascally . . . ." 

Now, a few days later, on the occasion of the 
attempted assassination of 1879, behold how 
the man whom " The Moscow Gazette " (edited 



I4 8 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

by Katkof) affected to confound with the scat- 
ter-brains of Nihilism, expressed himself: "The 
last ignominious news has greatly troubled me. 
I foresee that certain people will use this sense- 
less outrage to the disadvantage of the party 
which justly, in the interest of its liberal ideas, 
places the Tsar's life above every thing ; for salu- 
tary reforms are to be expected from him alone. 
In Russia, how can a reform be imagined 
which does not come from above ? . . . I am 
deeply troubled and grieved. Here for two 
days I have not slept at the idea of it. I think 
about it, and think about it ; but I cannot 
come to any conclusion. " 

Whatever were his apprehensions, he could 
not foresee with what fury of re-action the Em- 
peror would strive to stem the Liberal current, 
by which, when he first mounted the throne, he 
had allowed himself to be carried onward. Tur- 
genief suffered from this aberration of power 
more than can be told. He foresaw new acts 
of despair, which would give a color of reason 
to measures of repression constantly growing 
more crushing. He attributed this infatuated 
policy to the influence of Pobyedonostsef, the 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 149 

Ober-Prokaror of the Holy Synod ; and above 
all to the counsels of Katkof, that former Lib- 
eral, that exile converted to the most brutal 
absolutism. He writes : " Who can tell what 
is going on at home, Katkovio regnante ? " 

With what passion Turgenief uttered one day 
before two callers, one of whom was a French- 
man, this expression, which I find also in his 
correspondence ! With what pathetic eloquence 
he mourned for the days of yore, the days of 
the old oppression ! " We had then a bare wall 
before us," he writes, "but we knew where it 
was necessary to make the breach. To-day the ! 
door is ajar, but to enter through this narrow 
opening is more difficult than to undermine 
and cast down the wall. ,, 

I find, among some notes taken down after 
an afternoon call upon Ivan Turgenief during 
the winter of 1882, a rather expressive re'sumt 
of his conversation, which I beg permission to 
quote in its entirety. "At that time we felt 
sustained by an auxiliary which allows one to 
defy, and which finally softens, all the severities 
of power, — Opinion. We had on our side the 
two stimuli which lead to victory, — the feeling 



ISO IVAN TURGENIEF. 

of duty, the presentiment of success. Who 
would have believed that the clay would come 
when we should look back w T ith regret upon 
this period of terror, but of hope ; of oppres- 
sion, but of activity! Indeed, were not the 
youth of that time happy and enviable compared 
to those of to-day ? What sincere mind can 
help feeling the deepest pity for that handful 
of Russians, educated, or greedy for education, 
whom the misfortune of the times has driven 
to the most frightful extremes ? You might 
L say that every thinker is caught between the 
anvil of an ignorant populace and the hammer 
of a blinded power. The Russian people are 
afraid even of those who, scorning every dan- 
ger, are laboring to gain them their rights ; 
they are absolutely ignorant, and are afraid of 
every innovation. They have the anxious look, 
and the quick flashes of anger, of a wild beast. 
We have just seen them rush upon the Jews 
with a sort of frenzy. If the people were not 
kept like a bear fastened to a chain, they would 
treat the revolutionists with the same fairness 
and the same gentleness. 

" As to the throne, the end of advance in the 



IVAN TURGJZNIEF. IS I 

path of absolutism has just about been reached. 
It is now the formidable ideal of tyranny. Dur- 
ing the preceding reign it took the initiative of 
reform. Alexander II. was carried away by the 
current of liberal ideas. He ordered measures 
to be taken ; above all, he allowed projects to 
be elaborated. He wished, for example, to give 
the district assemblies power enough to strug- 
gle against the abuses of the tchinovniks, and 
to put a stop to corruption. But one day 
he was panic-struck. Karakozofs pistol-shot 
drove back into the shade that phantom of 
liberty, the appearance of which all Russia had 
hailed with acclamation. From that moment, 
and even to the end of his life, the Emperor 
devoted himself to the undoing of all that he 
had done. If he could have cancelled with 
one stroke the glorious ukaz which had pro- 
claimed the emancipation of the serfs, he would 
have been only too glad to disgrace himself. 

"What can be said of his successor, that 
doting sovereign, that victim nailed to the 
throne ? He shuts himself between four walls, 
and, what is worse, between four narrow, lim- 
ited minds, the responsible editors of the policy 



152 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

of an anonymous tsar, the former Liberal and 
exile, Katkof. It is a war upon ideas, a crusade 
of ignorance. Russia is having its Inquisition, 
it has its Torquemada. What other name is 
to be given to that minister of creeds, or, to 
speak more exactly, that procuror-general of 
the Synod, Pobyedonostsef ? 

"The Tsar sees in Pobyedonostsef the most 
virtuous and the most saintly man in all the 
empire. He has for him all the tenderness of 
Orgon ; and you might say that he likes to 
think, like that pig-headed dupe, — 

i He teaches me for naught to feel affection, 
My soul from every friendship he estranges.' 

"Just as the Tsar loves and venerates Pobye- 
donostsef, so he shows Katkof naive admiration 
and respectful deference. In the one he sees 
science inborn ; in the other, religion personi- 
fied. But the more dangerous of these two 
fanatics is Katkof, the former Liberal, the com- 
panion of Herzen's misfortunes, the ex-profess- 
or of philosophy at Moscow. He scorns to hold 
the reins of power ; he likes better to give the 
word to those who carry the order for him and 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 153 

by him alone. The ministers are his valets ; 
he has even his under-slaves ; it would not be 
interesting to mention all their names. He is 
the disgraceful Richelieu behind the throne, 
who terrorizes Russia. ,, 

Notwithstanding the very gloomy aspect of 
the present, Turgenief had unshaken faith in 
the future. "We must not expect that the 
future will be all roses. No matter, things will 
come out all right." And what were theA 
means, according to Turgenief s idea, of real- 1 
izing this ? Give up illusions and fidgeting. 
Don't imagine that you are going to find a pan- 
acea, a remedy for the great evils ; and that, to 
cure the Russian colossus of all his tribulations, 
it will be sufficient to practise a sort of incan- 
tation " analogous to the spells used by old 
women to calm the toothache suddenly, mirac- 
ulously. ,, According to Turgenief, the miracu- 
lous means alone changes: "sometimes it is a 
man, sometimes the natural sciences, sometimes 
a war; M but what is unchangeable is faith in the 
miracle. That is the superstition which first of 
all must be extirpated. 

Likewise the idea of obtaining without delay 



154 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

" large, beautiful, and glorious" results, the 
idea of wishing "to move mountains," must be 
renounced. It is necessary to know how to 
pay attention to little objects, to limit one's self 
to a very narrow circle of action, not to step out 
of it ; and there without glory, almost without 
result, work incessantly. The only activity 
that is fruitful was defined by Turgenief, in 
quoting the two verses of Schiller's old man : 

{Unwearied activity is that which adds one 
rain of sand to another." "What!" said he, 
"you begin by telling me that your construc- 
tive work is ended, that the school has just 
been begun ; and, a little farther on, you speak 
of the despair which takes hold of you ! I 
beg of you, for pity's sake : your enterprise has 
already had some small result. It is not un- 
fruitful. What more do you want ? Let every 
one do as much in his own sphere, and there 
will be a grand, a splendid result." 

And Turgenief was one of the first to put his 
doctrine into practice. Just as in his youth 
he signed the charter for the emancipation of 
his serfs, with the same pen which wrote the 
indictment of serfage in "The Annals of a 



IVAN TURG&NIER 155 

Sportsman ; " so in the time of his old age, not- 
withstanding his absence, tortured as he was by 
the horrors of disease, he preached humbleness 
of aim and constancy of effort, but he preached 
it by his example. All his cares were directed f 
to the improvement of the material and moraLb 
condition of his former serfs. He granted them 
a fifth of the sum settled upon for the redemp- 
tion. At his own expense he built a school ; he 
founded a hospital in his village of Selo Spas- 
koe ; he succeeded in diminishing drunkenness, 
and in spreading a taste for reading in a re- 
gion where, at the time of his boyhood, an edu- 
cated, self-taught muzhik was a genuine rarity. 

His correspondence shows that he was greatly 
concerned about his estate in the government 
of Orel : but it was not the revenue of his lands 
that troubled him ; it was the happiness, the 
moral welfare, of his little people of Spaskoe. 
Behold the evolution which he wanted to see 
accomplished from one end to the other of his 
country, and which, so far as in him lay, he 
called forth, he prepared. 

Any other policy seemed to him useless, dan- 
gerous, almost criminal. He hoped that the 



156 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

new reign was going to inaugurate a whole tra- 
dition of efforts in favor of the development of] 
the rural classes. That was why he manifested 
his sympathy with the new Tsar, on the acces- 
sion of Alexander III.: he applied to him the 
title, the " Emperor of the muzhiks" and, if this 
was not a name of praise, it was found at least 
to contain a counsel. 

"All that one can say," wrote Turgenief 
again on the subject of the Tsar, "is that he is 
Russian, and nothing but Russian. . . . Seeing 
him anywhere, one would know his country." 
I do not know whether these words went to the 
Tsar's heart ; but are they not honorable to him 
who penned . them ? What Slavophile would 
have imagined any thing more eloquent in their 
simplicity ? In giving this emperor, " in whose 
veins runs scarce a drop of Russian blood," his 
naturalization papers, Turgenief surely thought 
that he had reached the borders of eulogy. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 1 57 



III. 

After reading what has gone before, I trust 
that no one will be inclined to see a mere para- 
dox in this affirmation : Turgenief was above all 
things interested in the question of politics and 
social order, and of this interest were born all 
his great works. This was the reason that 
Turgeniefs writings so stirred the public : 
hence the favor of his readers at first was, 
enthusiastic ; hence came notorious alienation, 
irritation, almost calumnious fury, from the 
time when the public and the author no longer 
advanced with equal steps towards progress. 
For, here is the point to be noted : Turgenief 
never ceased to make progress ; but as long as 
he walked slowly, with regular steps, like a man 
who holds aloof from the popular current, and 
is not dragged along against his will by the 
rising tide of the throng, the masses of the 
nation — I mean the majority of the educated 



IS 8 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

classes — no longer regulated his gait, and, see- 
ing him each day a little farther behind them, 
imagined that he was retrograding or was not 
following. Turgenief was advancing, and he 
went to great lengths. Let us see how great 
was the distance between " The Annals of a 
Sportsman" and " Virgin Soil." 

Turgenief somewhere expressed his sympa- 
thy and admiration for Don Quixote. He con- 
trasted him with the dreamer Hamlet, in whom 
he took little stock. Did not he himself enter 
the career of letters like a knight-errant (cam- 
ficadoi) in the lists? From the very beginning, 
when he had won all the glory of a victor, he 
gave his young talent to the service of the right 
and of truth ; he turned his pen, like a sword, 
against egotism, against injustice, against preju- 
dice, — in a word, against the different forms 
lyof error. His maiden book, "The Annals of a 
* Sportsman," was not merely a literary event: 
it brought about a political revolution. This 
picture of the wretched condition of the serfs 
contributed in large measure to call forth the 
ukaz that enfranchised Russia. 

It was not the first time that fiction had 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 159 

attacked the social question. Gogol had already- 
struck the first blow against the enemy which 
Turgenief had the honor of defeating. But 
the author of " Dead Souls " had laid himself 
out especially to depict the faults and foibles of 
the small Russian proprietors ; and, while he 
made it sufficiently evident how miserable was 
the condition of the serfs under their grotesque 
or detestable tyranny, his book left the unfor- 
tunate muzhik in the background. Turgenief's 
originality consisted in placing this pariah in 
full light. He dared to show not only his pity- 
but his affection for the Russian peasant, often 
narrow-minded, ignorant, or brutal, but good at 
heart. He undertook to reveal to the Russians 
this being which they scarcely knew. 

In the very first pages of his book he showed 
him with his instinctive qualities ; and for this 
reason he took pains to place him in an excep- 
tional condition, that is to say, in that sort of 
relative independence occasionally realized in 
spite of, or by favor of, the law. Khor and 
Kalinuitch are accordingly almost freed from 
the actual miseries of serfage, — the first by 
living in the midst of a swamp, avoiding statute 



160 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

labor by paying a quit-rent (pbrok) ; the second 
by serving as whipper-in for his master, whom he 
passionately adores. The former is a muzhik, ' 
who has the feeling of reality, " who is settled 
in life;" the other is a dreamer, "who sticks to 
nothing, and smiles at all things." Khor the 
cautious has carefully observed men and things, 
and his experiences are expressed with that 
humorous naivete which gives such a color to 
the conversation of the Russian peasant. Ka- 
linuitch the enthusiast has the inspired lan- 
guage of a poet. He is largely endowed with 
mysterious powers. The bees obey him as 
though he were an enchanter. Both of them 
are good. The one is devout and gentle ; the 
other, simply cordial and hospitable. There is 
profit in listening to the former, and pleasure 
in holding intercourse with the latter. Under 
these features Turgenief pictured the Russian 
of the country districts. After showing him, 
so to speak, in his native state, he went on to 

C explain the deformities from which the type was 
niable to suffer under the brutalizing influences 

Lsf serfdom. 

The first alteration of the character of the 



IVAN TURGENIEF. l6l 

Russian muzhik is a sort of ferocious, even 
savage, humor, which takes the place of the 
original reason or ingenuity. The huntsman 
Yermolai' offers us a curious example of this 
reversion to barbarism, of this return of the 
muzhik towards the savage state. Emanci- 
pated in the manner of an outlaw, of a bandit, 
he lives in the woods or the marsh, sleeping on 
a roof, under a bridge, in the crotch of a tree, 
hunted down by the peasants like a hare, beaten 
sometimes like a dog, but, aside from these trials, 
enjoying to the full this strange independence. 
He does not support his wife or his dog, both 
of whom he beats with the same brutal indif- 
ference. He has all the instincts of the beast 
of prey in scenting game, in trapping birds, 
in catching fish. He already possesses the 
shrewdness of the savage : he would easily 
acquire his cruelty. " I did not like the expres- 
sion which came over his face when he applied 
his teeth to the bird he had just brought to 
earth." 

However precarious and anxious this inde- 
pendent life may be, it appears very enviable 
when compared to the torment and degrada- 



1 62 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

tions of slavery. The muzhik VI as walks all 
the way to Moscow, where he comes to ask a 
reduction in his quit-rent ; for his son who paid 
it for him is dead, and he himself is old. The 
barin slams the door in his face, with the words, 
"How do you dare to come to me ? " Vlas 
sadly returns to his hut, where his wife is wait- 
ing for him, blowing in her fist from starvation. 
" His lip is drawn, and in his little bloodshot 
eyes stands a tear." He suddenly bursts out 
into a laugh, thinking that they can't take any 
thing more from him than his life, — "a wretched 
pledge," — and that that damned German, the 
prikashchik Quintilian Semenitch, "will shuffle 
in vain : " that's all he'll get. That tear of 
anguish, and that desperate laugh, are never to 
be forgotten. 

Here are other impressions not less cruel. 
The serf Sutchok, now employed at his trade 
of fisherman, tells how he began by working as 
a cook ; and how, in changing his profession, 
according as he went from master to master, 
he found himself successively cook, restaurant- 
keeper, actor, then back to his ovens again, 
then wearing livery as sub-footman, then pos- 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 1 63 

tilion, then huntsman, then cobbler, then jour- 
neyman in a paper-mill. These caprices of the 
mastership which weighs upon the muzhik have 
not only their ridiculous side : there is always 
something detestable about it. The last owner 
of this wretch, whose life is only an irksome 
apprenticeship, is an old maid, who vents her 
spleen at having been left in single-blessedness 
by forbidding all her household to marry. This 
abasement of a human being, condemned by his 
master to isolation, to barrenness, like a beast, 
is powerfully shown in the little tale entitled 
" Yermolai and the Miller Girl." 

But what seems still more painful than the 
slavery itself is to see that it is endured with 
resignation, and sometimes even upheld, ex- 
cused, by those who have to submit to it. " How 
do you live ? " is asked of one of these victims 
of feudal despotism. "Do you get wages, a 
fixed salary ? " — "A salary ! Ekh ! barin, we 
are given our victuals. Indeed, that's all we 
need, God knows ! And may Heaven grant long 
life to our banana!" Another has just been 
tremendously flogged. He treats with very 
bad grace the stranger who presumes to express 



164 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

commiseration ; he takes the part of the master 
who has so cruelly abused him for a trifle ; he 
is proud of belonging to a man who makes 
strict use of his seignorial prerogatives. " No, 
no! there is not a barin like to him in the 
whole province ! " 

Turgenief does not confine himself to the ex- 
pression of pity for the muzliiks : he is unspar- 
ing of the nobles. With w r hat irony he depicts 
for us their false sentimentality, their detestable 
selfishness ! How he lays his finger on their 
absurdities ! How he scourges their cruelty ! 
How he lays bare their hypocrisy ! They all ap- 
pear in the book, from the narrow and cringing 
citizen, to the cynically brutal country pomycsli- 
c/iik, from the gentlemen of the steppe (step- 
niaks) up to the vanished nobles, those legend- 
ary vyelmozliui, personified in Count AlekseT 
Orlof, so handsome, so strong, so terrible, and 
at the same time so beloved! "If you were not 
acquainted with him, you would feel abashed ; 
but after getting wonted to his presence, you felt 
warmed and delighted as by a beautiful sunrise." 
The author finds in this vanished aristocracy 
the rather barbaric form of his own grandfather, 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 1 65 

and he cannot refrain here from a sort of ad- 
miration. It is true, that small men have a 
sympathy very differently marked for these 
ostentatious giants of the olden days. Besides, 
is it not enough that the author of " Annals of 
a Sportsman " makes no secret of the excesses 
committed by those of his race ? Has he not 
the right to remember that the form of oppres- 
sion has merely been changed, and that the 
serf is not less abused from falling from the 
mighty hands of the tyrants, into the hooked 
claws of tyrannical weaklings ? 

But the true tormentor of the serf was a man 
whose condition brought him nearest to the 
muzhik; the one who, more often than not, was 
himself only a muzhik polished up, — in other 
words, the representative of the proprietor, 
the superintendent (prikashchik), the burmistr. 
This subaltern master pays the peasant's quit-) 
rent until the latter, overwhelmed with debts, y 
is absolutely in his power. He becomes his \ 
slave, his drudge. Now and then will be found-' 
in the woods the corpse of some wretch who 
has torn himself from this hell, by suicide. But 
what is the use of complaining ? The proprie- 



1 66 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

tor receives his revenue, and is satisfied. And 
then the prikashchik has a thousand ways of 
getting hold of the fault-finder, and the wreak- 
ing of his vengeance brings a groan. 

Proprietors, muzhiks > priskashchiks y all these 
characters strike, move, stir, by their fidelity to 
the truth. In a subject which lent itself so 
easily to declamation, the author succeeded in 
refraining from all excess of fine writing. This 
self-restraint in form gave greater force to the 
satire, and added weight to the argument. Be- 
sides, under the irony the bitterness was felt, and 
under the comic fervor was occasionally heard 
the rumbling of a generous wrath. Turgenief 
himself explained the feelings which animated 
him at this period of his life, which I would 
rather compare to the morning of a battle. He 
had just left Russia, the atmosphere of which 
seemed no longer fit to breathe. He went away 
to get a fresh start, so as to come back with a 
renewed impetus against his enemy serfage. 
11 I swore that I would fight it even to the death ; 
I vowed that I would never come to terms with 
it : that was my Hannibal's oath." 

From one end of his work to the other, Tur- 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 1 67 

genief never did aught else than thus reflect 
the feelings of the Russian people, express its 
hopes, note carefully, proclaim sincerely, all the 
forward and backward movements of opinion. 
In every one of his novels, there is to be found 
one person whose appearance, conduct, and 
worth may vary, but whose dominant character- 
istic holds throughout all changes. This per- 
sonage, however alive he may be, serves to 
express an abstraction. He is, so to speak, the 
incarnation of the wishes, the fears, the claims, 
of the Russian people. Now, in Russia, as else- 
where, and still more than elsewhere, public 
opinion is undergoing constant modification : 
the novelist has followed with careful eye, and 
copied with accurate hand, all these rapid trans- 
formations. 

In Dmitri Rudin, he depicts for us a lofty but 
inconsequential generation, eloquent, but lack- 
ing in depth, eager for every undertaking, but 
having no fixed purpose; as the youth of 1840 
must have been, who had the power of speech, 
but were prevented from action. 1 

1 Pisemsky described this same generation in his great story, Lindi 
Sorokovuikh Godof (People of the Forties). — N. H. D. 



1 68 IVAN TURGEXIEF. 

This was the epoch when there was a passion 
for words, and especially for words of foreign 
origin. Hegel's philosophy frothed and foamed 
in these Russian brains, so little constituted for 
the digestion of metaphysical nutriment. But 
the fashion was for cosmopolitanism : they af- 
fected to scorn national habits ; they dreamed 
only of going " beyond Russia." Rudin, who 
personifies this error, w r as its first victim. At 
first he carries away, he rouses to enthusiasm, 
all whom he approaches ; then his friends, his 
disciples, ultimately, sooner or later, turn against 
him. He succeeds in rousing only hatred, or 
exciting only distrust. Useless and inactive 
amid his own people, he goes to perish on a 
French barricade; and by a supreme but uncon- 
scious irony, the insurgent who fights at his side 
pronounces his funeral oration in these words : 
" Lo, they have killed our Pole ! " 

Is it true to say that the Rudins were of no 
advantage to their country ? The author gives 
us to understand, that their words may have 
cast the germ of generous thoughts into more 
than one young soul to whom nature will not 
refuse the advantage of a fruitful activity. 



IVAN TURG&NIEF. 1 69 

To this same unfortunate family of fore- 
runners, and to this same sacrificed but indis- 
pensable generation, belongs the character of 
Lavretsky in the romance entitled "A Nest 
of Noblemen." Unlike Rudin, Lavretsky owes 
nothing to schooling. Scarcely does he have 
time for applying his simple and ingenuous mind 
to the acquisition of knowledge during the 
period between the moment when he escapes 
the durance of paternal despotism, and that 
when he takes upon him the more pleasing yoke 
of conjugal will. He therefore has remained 
Russian ; he believes in the future of the na- 
tional genius. He is lavish of himself, and of 
those of his age ; but he admires the tendencies 
of the young, and he praises their endeavors. 
Departing from his country, happy, or at least 
under that delusion, he returns alone and 
crushed ; but he has the consolation of doing his 
duty, that is to say, cultivating his estate, and 
improving the lot of his peasants. This un- 
ostentatious work of Lavretsky's, better than 
Rudin's brilliant declamations, pointed out to 
the rising generations what Russia henceforth 
expected from her sons: "You must act, and 



170 IVAN TURGEXIEF. 

the benediction of us old men will fall upon 
you." 

But this period of action which they seem to 
be approaching will be postponed before the 
unanimous wishes of the novelist and the read- 
er. In the book " On the Eve," translated into 
French under the title " Helene," x the author's 
aim is very evident. He contrasts two Rus- 
sians with a Bulgarian ; and the brilliant or 
solid qualities of the artist Shubin and the stu- 
dent Bersenief yield before the unique virtue 
of Insarof, a more common nature. This virtue 
of the barbarian is to go straight ahead ; he 
does not delay for dreaming or discussion ; 
there is nothing of the Hamlet about him. 
However strange be his ideal, however adven- 
turous his lot, he carries with him Elena's hesi- 
tating wisdom, just as Don Quixote overcame 
Sancho's rebellious good sense. It is this deci- 
siveness, this bold gait, this firm resolution not 
to fall back, and resolutely to emerge from the 
beaten path, which the author of " On the Ev 
seems to hold up before the Russian people. 
But it might be said that he despaired of find- 

1 Also under the title Un Dulgare. — N. H. D. 



the J 
re'V 



IVAN' TURGENIEF. I7 1 

ing in his own country the man of action, des- 
tined to win the glory to come ; and it was thus 
that the Russian critics explained his signifi- 
cant choice of a Bulgarian for the hero of his 
romance. 

This ingenious explanation is not correct. 
Insarof and Elena have experienced life. 
This beautiful young Russian girl, who is 
anxious to devote herself to a noble cause, 
and who, not being able to die for her own 
country, clings to the lot of the foreigner who 
shows her the path of great sacrifices, was not 
a creature of Turgeniefs imagination. Not 
only did Elena exist, but there was a throng 
of Elenas who asked only for a chance to 
show themselves. This was seen as soon as 
the romance was published. All feminine 
hearts throbbed. One might say that the 
author had placed before the eyes of the vir- 
gins of Russia a mirror, where, for the first 
time, they were allowed to see themselves, 
and become conscious of their own existence. 
A few years later Elena would have had a 
chance to offer herself to Russia. She would 
have acted like Viera Sasuluitch, or, not to 



17 2 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

go outside of fiction, like Marian in " Virgin 
Soil." 
.4^ In the famous novel "Fathers and Sons," 
\ the young generation for the first time comes 
yj upon the scene. It is represented by the medi- 
cal student Bazarof. Better to bring out his 
hero by a fortunate contrast, the author has 
put this brutal but thoroughly original plebeian 
face to face with a gentleman in whom are 
united all the qualities and the eccentricities 
of the conservative nobility. Again, it is Ger- 
man education which has fashioned Bazarof. 
But Hegel's theories have given place to Scho- 
penhauer's ; and Germanic pessimism, grafted 
on the Russian mind, has brought forth very 
strange fruit. The young men of whom Baza- 
rof is a type are of the earth earthy, to the 
same degree as that generation of which Ru- 
din was the shining example showed itself 
exalted. They have only one aim, action ; they 
admit only one principle of action, utility; they 
see only one form of utility at the present time, 
absolute negation. " Yet isn't it necessary to 
rebuild ? — That does not concern us. Before 
all things we must clear the ground/' 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 173 

Here, clearly formulated, is the theory of 
Nihilism. This word, invented by Turgenief, 
and spoken for the first time in " Fathers and 
Sons," has in short space gone all over the 
world. We know that all Russian readers, 
young and old, blamed the author of the novel 
for slandering them. The older generation 
could not forgive him for having spurned their 
prejudices ; the rising generation were angry 
with him for not preaching their errors. What 
strikes us to-day is that at this moment he was 
able to remain so clear-sighted and sincere ; 
that he was able to unite so much nobility 
with Pavel Kirsanofs narrow-sightedness, and 
so much subtilty with Bazarofs destructive 
scepticism. 

But the character which Turgenief liked best 
in this romance of " Fathers and Sons " was 
Bazarof, — in other words, that personage rep- 
resenting the Russian soul with aspiration to- 
ward progress, no longer ideal and vague, but 
violent, and brutal. " What ! do you, do you say 
that in Bazarof I desired to draw a caricature 
of our young men ? You repeat (excuse the 
freedom of the expression), you repeat that 



174 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

stupid reproach? Bazarof ! but he is my well- 
beloved son, who caused me to break with Kat- 
kof, for whom I expended all the colors on 
my palette. Bazarof, that quick spirit, that 
hero, a caricature ! " And he took delight in 
returning to the definition of this enigmatic 
personage. He never wearies in commenting 
on "this harbinger type," this "grand figure," 
surrounded by a genuine "magic spell," and, 
as it were, by some sort of "aureole." 

The conclusion of the book lies in the ironi- 
cal and bitter advice given by Bazarof to his 
friend Arkad : "Take thee a wife as soon as 
thou canst, build thy nest well, and beget many 
children. They will certainly be people of 
brains, because they will come in due time, 
and not like thee and me." 

Thus is the solution of the social problem 
once more postponed. The rock of Sisyphus 
falls back as heavily on the new-comers as 
on their predecessors. The recoil is even so 
mighty that the observer feels that he too is 
attacked by pessimism ; and if he does not take 
pride in absolute negation, like Bazarof or his 
young adepts, he just as surely comes to deny 



IVAN TURGENIEF, 175 

their qualities, to see any sense in their con- 
du:t. The romance " Smoke," which is the 
expression of this new state of mind, roused 
in Russia all *he clamors by which a satire is 
received. What was entirely overlooked was 
the feeling of painful compassion hidden under 
the aggressive form. It was an act of enlight- 
ened patriotism, to let daylight into the hollow 
declamations of the progressists, and to lay 
the scourge on the stupid folly, the idiotic de- 
pravity, of a nobility which had brought itself 
into discredit. Between Gubaref, that solemn 
imbecile, and Ramirof, the complaisant hus- 
band of a faithless wife, one must go to the 
hero of the story, Litvinof ; that is to say, to 
the idealized Russia, whose gloomy and painful 
destiny we have followed across all Turgeniefs 
work, under the features of Rudin, of Lavret- 
sky, of Bazarof. Like Lavretsky twenty years 
before, Litvinof returns to his country, over- 
whelmed with domestic troubles, which exas- 
perate all his other feelings, and change the 
mishaps of his patriotism into despair. The 
vanity of love makes him find all things vain. 
In the tumult of the recent years, in the agita- 



17^ IVAN TURGENIEF. 

tion of divers classes, in the words of others, 
in his own thoughts, he sees mere nothingness, 
sham, smoke. The desolation of this conclu- 
sion was brought up against the author of the 
book, by his compatriots, with a warmth which 
almost disgusted him with the role of political 
observer, and almost deprived us likewise of a 
masterpiece in which Turgenief seems to have 
reached his greatest height, — " Virgin Soil." 

The author of " Fathers and Sons " named 
and defined theoretic Nihilism: in " Virgin 
Soil/' the same author shows us the Nihilists 
at the very moment when, for the first time, 
they begin to act. Between the two books a 
pretty long time elapsed, during which Tur- 
genief kept silent. There is lacking, therefore, 
among his works, a book which might let us 
into the secrets of the dark development and 
mysterious spread of the new theories. In 
regard to this Nihilist propaganda in its early 
years, when it was only an attempt at self- 
instruction, we find, in "Virgin Soil/' only 
hints, allusions. The very character, however, 
who is going to bring about the crisis, at the 
risk of destroying every thing along with him- 



ivan turgjSnief. 177 

self, Markelof, still reads and propagates with 
nai've assurance the " brochures " which are 
secretly sent him, and which he passes on 
"under the mantle " to his other confederates. 
What subjects were treated in these books so 
carefully hidden ? Those which were worth the 
trouble of reading were translations of foreign 
works on political economy ; writings attacking, 
with greater or less ability, the problems of 
society. But this instruction, good or bad, 
could not have the least influence on the great 
mass of the Russian population, which does not 
read at all. 

It was therefore necessary to find more effica- 
cious means of action, and to organize actual 
preaching. Then it was that a pretty large 
number of people belonging to the educated 
classes, students like Nedzhanof, women vol- 
untarily deserting their own rank in life, like 
Marian, undertook to go down among the 
people, to dress in their style, to speak their 
dialect, to lead their rough lives, to gain their 
confidence at the cost of this labor, to open « 
their minds to the ideas of liberty and progress, 
to rescue them from the double curse of lazi- 



1/3 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

ness and drunkenness, and, finally, to bring 
them into the path of action. The trouble was 
I that these people who preached action did not 
lth em selves know where to begin the work. 
'Each of them was waiting for the word of 
command, which no one could give ; for in this 
concert of wills there was no one to direct, and 
the most violent efforts, from lack of deter- 
mined purpose, were obliged to remain without 
results. 

Another insurmountable obstacle lay in the 
repugnance of the people at emerging from 
their tremendous inertia. Nedzhanof compares 
Holy Russia to a colossus, whose head touches 
the north pole and his feet the Caucasus, and 
who, holding a jug of vodka in his clutched 
fingers, sleeps an endless sleep. Those who 
try to struggle against this sleep lose their time 
and their labor. Discouragement takes hold of 
them, and some of them, like Markelof, for hav- 
ing desired, having tried by themselves alone, 
to perform a part which needs the efforts of an 
army, go forth on the hopeless path by the gate 
that leads to Siberia; others, like Nedzhanof, 
having lost faith in this work for the regenera- 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 179 

tion and enfranchisement of a people to which 
they believed themselves capable of offering 
their devotion, throw down violently the double 
burden of their vain labor and their ridiculous 
lives. The Russian Hamlet gets rid of his 
mission by suicide. 

This beautiful novel of "Virgin Soil," which 
must be read through, appeared on the very 
eve of the great Nihilist suit against the One 
Hundred and Ninety-three. At first the cry 
was raised, that the author did not draw a true 
picture : the author was again slandering 
Russia. A few days later the critics, dis- 
mayed at his power of divination, accused 
Turgenief of having got into the confidence 
of the ruling power, and of having had in his 
hands the entire brief of the preparatory trial. 1 
Some Nihilists were already dreaming of more 
tragic performances. " I also," said one of 
them, who at this time was a refugee in Paris, 
" I also am a Nedzhanof ; but I shall not kill 
myself as he did : there is a better way of 
doing it." This better way was worse. It was 

1 It was reported, and believed by some, that the Russian govern- 
ment paid Turgenief fifty thousand rubles for Virgin Soil. — N. H. D. 



I SO IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

assassination in the manner of Solovief, who, 
having resolved to kill himself, and for the 
same reasons that influenced Nedzhanof, will 
inaugurate suicide with a bloody preface. 

Since "Virgin Soil," the evolution of Nihil- 
ism has made new and rapid strides. The 
mania of descending among the people, and 
" being simplified" has given place to other 
fantastic notions, just as useless, but less inno- 
cent. We have said that Turgenief died before 
he had time to finish the romance in which he 
would have shown us the agitations of to-day, 
and possibly pointed out the social reforms of 
to-morrow. 

Who knows what Russia is preparing for us ? 
Hitherto the reforms have been decreed by the 
throne ; and the tikazcs have remained without 
effect, because they have not had the support 
in the lever of the people. The expenditure of 
energy, starting from above, did not make the 
nation stir. But now suddenly the nation seems 
to be shaking off its torpor. The peasants, 
hitherto deaf to all voices, and stubbornly re- 
sistant of all progress, have perhaps found for 
themselves the way of safety and redemption. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. l8l 

They are assembling in their villages, and they 
are organizing the league against drunkenness. 
This strike against the wine-shop is terrifying 
to the Russian clergy : they see in it a new 
form of heresy. In their eyes, these water- 
drinkers are raskolniks, and the most dangerous 
kind. We know the Russian proverb versified 
by Nekrasof : " The muzhik has a head like a 
bull : when a folly finds lodgement there, it is 
impossible to drive it out, even with heavy 
blows of the goad." It is this headstrong ob-' 
stinacy which seemed to postpone forever, and 
which may precipitate to-morrow, the settlement 
of the social question. 



1 82 IVAN TURGENIEF. 



IV. 

The expressions, " Russian ideal," " repre- 
sentative type of one generation," .and other 
terms of this kind, which one must necessarily 
use to mark the connection between Turge- 
niefs different works, must not be allowed to 
give a false idea of the nature of his talent and 
of his methods in fiction. 

He has himself defined his talent. He has 
explained his methods so far as they were essen- 
tial. We have, therefore, only to turn to these 
precious directions. " I will tell you in a few 
words that I am, so far as preference goes, a 
realist ; and that I am interested, more than all 
else, in the living truth of the human physiog- 
nomy." He says elsewhere, that at no moment 
of his career has he ever taken for his point of 
departure in a new creation an abstract idea, 
but that he has always started with the true 
image, the objective reality, the characteristic 
personage observed and living. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 1 83 

Here is the very principle of his aesthetic, 
as he summed it up in his letter to Mr. King, 
a novelist just beginning his career: "If the 
study of the human physiognomy, and of the 
life of another, interests you more than the pro- 
mulgation of your own feelings and your own 
ideas ; if, for example, it is more agreeable for 
you to reproduce accurately the external ap- 
pearance not only of a man, but also of a sim- 
ple object, than to express with elegance and 
warmth what you feel in seeing this object or 
this man, — then you are an objective writer, 
and you can begin a story or a novel." 

Truth is not disagreeable to those who love 
it : it gives life to their conceptions. Turge- 
nief's work, the political bearing of which we 
have already tried to show our readers, is a 
little world where go and come a thousand 
people with variously expressive characters 
and faces. The creator of such living char- 
acters as these has been compared to a great 
portrait-painter. The comparison is unjust to 
the novelist. Like the great painters of por- 
traits, he seizes a dominant feature, and ex- 
presses it powerfully. It is thus that in a 



1 84 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

book, on the canvas, the resemblance is caught. 
But the art of a Titian, of a Reynolds, renders 
the aspect of the face, and reveals, if you like, 
something more, — the temperament of the 
model. It goes scarcely beyond that. The 
novelist expresses, besides, a whole order of 
hidden facts, a whole internal spectacle, of 
which the brush scarcely gives us an inkling. 
There is therefore a double field of studies to 
go over, a double power of observation to put 
into use. It is necessary at one and the same 
time to note the attitude, and interpret the dis- 
position ; to catch the expression of the face, and 
to penetrate the meaning of the character. 

Turgenief possessed this double talent to 
a very high degree. As a general thing, 
he paints with broad touches ; and his por- 
trait, both physically and morally, is finished 
in few words. Sometimes the detail is more 
minute, but the accumulation of lines serves 
only to verify the dominant impression. I 
refer the reader to the romance of " The 
Abandoned One," and to that admirable por- 
trait of the old Russian gentleman in the time 
of Catherine II. What a calling-back of the 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 1 85 

past is given by this old man of lofty stature, 
perfumed with ambergris, glacial in doublet of 
silk with its relief of stock and lace ruffles, a 
suspicion of powder on his hair brought behind 
into a cue, and in his hand a gold snuff-box 
ornamented with the empress's cipher! He 
always speaks French ; he scarcely knows 
Russian. He reads perforce every day Vol- 
taire, Mably, Helvetius, the Encyclopedistes ; 
he has whilom improvised verses in Madame de 
Polignac's saloii; he has been among the guests 
at Trianon ; he has seen Mirabeau wearing coat- 
buttons of extravagant size, and his opinion on 
our great orator is, that he was " exaggerated 
in all respects ; that, on the whole, he was a 
man of low tone, in spite of his birth." 

It is seen by this example, that Turgeniefs 
portraits often represent a class in an individ- 
ual. They are the expression of an epoch. 
In fact, though he studies nature closely, he 
takes pains not to content himself, as our real- 
ists do, with the first model that comes to 
hand. He carefully seeks for the character 
whose features are sufficiently marked and ori- 
ginal, so that in copying it he shall be sure to 



1 86 IVAN TURGENIEF, 

reproduce the general type. Thus he discov- 
^/ered Bazarof, the hero of " Fathers and Sons.' 1 
The idea was given him by the chance which 
brought to his sick-bed in a small Russian city 
the "young doctor of the district," who served 
him for his model. I do not know whether all 
the characters of " Virgin Soil/' without excep- 
tion, passed under the author's eyes; but I have 
heard Turgenief tell how he knew, and was 
able to study, the most characteristic personage 
of the. story, the Nihilist woman, — the upright, 
solemn, and rather absurd, but strong and sub- 
lime Mashurina. 

/ It was by his knowledge of the heart of 
/ women, and by the thorough-going fascination of 
his heroines, that Turgenief left far behind him 
his great predecessor Gogol. By an inexplicable 
peculiarity, the author of "The Revizor" of 
"Dead Souls," cared only to paint women who 
were not women at all, who are lifeless abstrac- 
tions or caricatures. 1 The most gossiping biog- 
raphers are embarrassed to explain the reason 
of this impotence. All that can be said is that 

1 Yuliana Betrishef in Dead Souls is not a portrait: she is a lumi- 
nous apparition. — Author's note. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 1 87 

Gogol dreaded too much the approach of woman- 
kind, ever to have the chance to study the sex. 
On the contrary, Turgenief s heroines are so 
life-like, that under each portrait his readers 
have tried to recognize and name some model. 
All well-informed Russians would have told 
you in what palace in Warsaw dwelt Irena of 
" Smoke," or at the first official reception would 
have pointed you Mrs. Sipiagina of " Virgin 
Soil." It certainly seems that all these delicate 
creations have the irresistible seduction of real- 
ity. There is not a romance, not a story, by 
Turgenief, in which there does not shine forth 
some feminine face, sometimes of a rather 
strange grace, but singularly lifelike and touch- 
ing- Natalia and her sister in " Dmitri Rudin," 
Liza in "A Nest of Noblemen,' Elena in " On 
the Eve," Marian in "Virgin Soil," — it would 
be necessary to name them all. 

What rather surprises the French reader is 
not to find them always beautiful ; at least, with 
that perfect and improbable beauty which our 
novelists do not hesitate to give their expres- 
sionless dolls. One has regular features, a 
pretty foot, but her hands are too large. An- 



1 88 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

other, at first sight, seems ugly : " She wore 
her thick chestnut hair short, and she seemed 
to be fretful ; but her whole person gave the 
impression of something strong, passionate, and 
fiery. Her feet and her hands were extremely 
dainty ; her little body, robust and supple, re- 
minded one of the Florentine statuettes of the 
sixteenth century ; her movements were grace- 
ful and harmonious. " What idealized beauty 
would have this living grace ? 

Another singularity, which shows us to what 
a degree the author takes us from our own lati- 
tude : in him the women have less originality 
than the young girls. The indecision and fee- 
bleness found in their lovers, the Rudins and 
the Nedzhanofs, is paralleled by the resolute 
wisdom, and — let us use the words " graceful 
virility," in them. They somewhat resemble the 
Roman girls, and we expect to hear them say 
in their way the " Non dolet" of the illustrious 
Arria. But no; they have not in the least these 
rather theatrical attitudes and words. It is the 
Nedzhanofs who die like impatient Stoics, or 
perhaps like discouraged Epicureans : Marian 
continues to live, and without bustle to pre- 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 1 89 

pare for the freeing of the country which she 
loves. 

Women raised by noble feeling to the scorn 
of death are found elsewhere than in Russia. 
What is more rare, and almost impossible to 
find, are these fanatical sacrifices) these renun- 
ciations worthy of the primitive days of the 
Church, which associate lovely maidens of six- 
teen with imbecile vagabonds eaten up by hide- 
ous ulcers. Turgenief might have m^ultiplied 
in his work description of ,npathological cases 
(/* Stran^v^i-nries "^ ; } out if his realism is too 
artistic to delay over what is commonplace, he 
is too honest to devote himself to exceptions. 

The form which best brings out this sincerity 
of expression is the tale. Turgenief takes little 
stock in dramatic form, at least in his own case. 
"I see a subject," he used to say, "only when I 
have the framework, the portrait, the dialogues, 
the wanderings, of a narration." In the drama 
he felt himself bothered by the necessity of col- 
lecting, abridging, curtailing, filling in ; and his 
psychology seemed to him warped, when pre- 
sented in miniature. It is in vain that you 
brought up in opposition to this modest claim 



19° IVAN TURGENIEF. 

the form of such and such of his stories, which 
from beginning to end is an uninterrupted 
scene, a dramatic dialogue. 

" That is not dramatic dialogue," said he : he 
was and had to remain a narrator. 

To find finished narration, it is sufficient, 
indeed, to open at hap-hazard "The Annals of 
a Huntsman." Nothing is lacking; not char- 
acter-painting, or lively course of the story, or 
surpriseS? circumstances, or development of 
the situation, or^™ 011 )' of outline, or feeling 
for nature, or grace of style; 3£-¥8riie*t>f coloring. 
But one ought to have heard Turgenief, and to 
have seen him in his character of story-teller, 
to imagine to what degree all these qualities 
in him were spontaneous. It was especially in 
this that his conversation was unlike any one 
else's : it translated ideas into images, and, with- 
out any attempt, created paintings which one 
would never forget. 

Does narration in Turgenief gain by assum- 
ing the ampler proportions of the novel? Our 
French taste is open to suspicion, and I hesi- 
tate about replying. Our good novelists are 
such clever carpenters : they construct so sym- 



IVAN TURGENIEF. I9I 

metrically works so ingeniously arranged for 
effect ; the interest is kept up with such skill ; 
the action moves along with such a certain step, 
towards a logical result feared or suspected from 
the very first word ! We find ourselves at first 
not quite so much at our ease in these Russian 
novels, which are full of art, but are bare of 
little artifices ; where the developments are like 
the course of real life; where the characters 
hesitate, and sometimes remain still ; where the 
action develops without haste ; and where the 
author does not even think it important to come 
to an end. It is sufficient for him to state facts, 
and explain characters. This perfect natural- 
ness, at first a trifle dubious, finally comes to 
have a great charm. There is nothing which is 
more able to make us reflect on the puerile 
stress which we lay on the method, and on the 
often to-be-regretted emptiness of our novels of 
industrious mechanism. 

We should not have given Turgenief his 
just deserts if we forgot to praise him as a poet 
worthy of all admiration. I mean, as a poet in 
prose; for Turgenief was no more successful 
than Gogol in making good verse. Both of them 



I9 2 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

used a language that was picturesque, infinitely 
expressive, full of images, and, in the case of 
Turgenief more than Gogol, of perfect purity 
and the greatest variety. He feels all the 
beauties of nature, and expresses them with 
powerful originality, or a delicate charm which 
shines through even the rather thick veil of 
translations. And yet what shadings escape 
us, what graces are lost for us ! 

The Russian language has infinite resources. 
If it is less exact in expressing the relations 
of action and of time, it brings out the most 
imperceptible circumstances of action. It out- 
lines with less clearness : it paints with incred- 
ible richness of coloring. It is easy to under- 
stand what effects a writer who can see and can 
express — a poet, in a word — is able to make 
with it. Turgenief s descriptions threw Meri- 
mce into despair. One day, when he was trying 
to put into French a passage where the author 
had represented the peculiar sound of the rain 
falling on a sheet of water, the French words 
grdsillcment froid (cold shrivelling), destined to 
translate this inexpressible noise, caused the 
author of " Colomba " to hesitate. "Yet that 



IVAN- TURGENIEF. 193 

is it," said he, thinking better of it; "and the 
thing must be said, or lose the bit of observa- 
tion, which is perfectly true to nature. The 
Devil take the pedants ! Let us leave the 
phrase." 

How far this poetic realism is from our flat 
and tiresome enumerations of details heaped up 
without selection ! But the parallel between 
the Russian realists and the French realists, to 
which this subject constantly attracts us, would 
carry us too far. It is sufficient to point out 
the essential difference. Observation in our 
realists is systematic and cold ; in the Rus- 
sians, and, above all, in Turgenief, it is always 
natural, and generally passionate. There is not 
a novel by Turgenief where the pathetic has 
not a large part ; and sometimes this pathos, 
by the simplest means, reaches heights neigh- 
boring upon the sublime. 

I shall only quote one example of it, taken 
from " Fathers and Sons ; " and I have no fear 
that the reader will charge me with bad taste 
in cutting out this admirable scene from this 
novel, extended as it is : — 

" Although Bazarof pronounced these last 



194 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

words with a rather resolute expression, he 
could not bring himself to tell his father of his 
departure until they were in the library, just as 
he was going to bid him good-night. He said, 
with a forced yawn, — 

"'Wait a moment. I almost forgot to let 
you know. It will be necessary to send our 
horses to Fyodot to-morrow for the relay/ 

"Vasili Ivanovitch stood stupefied. 

" ' Is Kirsanof going to leave us ? ' he asked 
at last. 

" ' Yes, and I am going with him.' 

" Vasili Ivanovitch fell back stupefied. 

" ' You are going to leave us ! ' 

" ' Yes, I have business. Have the kindness 
to send the horses/ 

"'Very well,' stammered the old man, 'for 
the relay. Very good, — only — only — is it 
possible ? ' 

44 4 I must go to Kirsanofs for a few days. I 
shall come right back/ 

44 'Yes, for several days. Very well/ 

"Vasili Ivanovitch took out his handkerchief, 
and blew his nose, bending over till he almost 
touched the floor. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 195 

" l Well, be it so. It shall be done. But I 
thought that you — longer. Three days — 
after three years of absence. It isn't — it isn't 
very long, Yevgdni.' 

"'I just told you that I would come right 
back. I must ! ' 

" ' You must ? Very well : before all things, 
one must do his duty. You want me to send 
the horses ? Very well ; but we did not expect 
this, Arina and I. She just went to ask a 
neighbor for some flowers to put in your 
room.' 

"Vasfli Ivanovitch did not add that every 
morning at daybreak, in bare feet in his slip- 
pers, he went to find Timofeitch, handing him 
a torn bill, which he picked out from the bot- 
tom of his pocket-book with trembling fingers. 
This bill was designed for the purchase of dif- 
ferent provisions, principally food and red wine, 
great quantities of which the young men con- 
sumed. 

" ' There is nothing more precious than lib- \ 
erty ; that's my principle. It is not well to I 
hinder people. One should not ' — 

"Vasfli suddenly stopped, and started for the 
door. 



I<?6 IVAN TURGENIEF. 

" ' We shall see each other soon again, father, 
I promise you.' 

" But Vasfli Ivanovitch did not return. He 
left the room, making a gesture with his hand. 
Coming into his bed-chamber, he found his 
wife already asleep ; and he began to pray in 
a low voice, so as not to disturb her slumber. 
However, she waked up. 

" ' Is it you, Vasfli Ivanovitch ? ' she asked. 

" i Yes, my dear/ 

"'You have just left Yeniushka? I am 
afraid that he is not comfortable sleeping on 
the sofa. Yet I told Anfisushka to give him 
your field-mattress and the two new cushions. 
I would have given him our feather-bed too, 
but I think I remember that he does not like 
to sleep too easy/ 

"'That's no matter, my dear ; don't trouble 
yourself. He is comfortable. — Lord, have pity 
on us sinners,' he added, continuing his prayer. 
Vasfli Ivanovitch did not talk long. He did 
not wish to announce the tidings that would 
have broken his poor wife's rest. 

"The two young men took their departure 
the next morning. Every thing in the house, 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 197 

from early that morning, assumed a sad aspect. 
Anfisushka let fall the plate that she was carry- 
ing ; Fyedka himself was entirely upset, and 
finally left his boots. Vasili Ivanovitch moved 
about more than ever. He tried hard to hide 
his disappointment ; he spoke very loud, and 
walked noisily : but his face was hollow, and 
his eyes seemed always to # avoid his son. Arina 
Vlasievna wept silently. She would have en- 
tirely lost her self-control if her husband had 
not given her a long lecture in the morning. 
When Bazarof, after having repeated again and 
again that he would come back before a month 
was over, finally tore himself from the arms 
that held him back, and sat down in the taran- 
tds ; when the horses started, and the jingling 
of the bells was mingled with the rumbling of 
the wheels ; when it was no use to look any 
longer ; when the dust was entirely settled, and 
Timofeitch, bent double, had gone staggering 
back to his lodging ; when the two old people 
found themselves once more alone in their 
house, which seemed also to have become 
smaller and older, . . . Vasili Ivanovitch, who 
but a few moments before was waving his 



I9 8 IVAN TURGENJEF. 

handkerchief so proudly from the steps, threw 
himself into a chair, and hung his head on his 
breast. 'He has left us,' he said with a trem- 
bling voice, — 'left us ! He found it lonesome 
with us. Now I am alone, alone/ he repeated 
again and again, lifting each time the forefinger 
of his right hand. 1 Arina Vlasievna drew near 
him, and, leaning h$r white head on the old 
man's white head, she said, ' What's to be 
done about it, Vasili ? A son is like a shred 
torn off. He is a young hawk : it pleases him 
to come, and he comes ; it pleases him to go, 
and he flies away. And you and I are like little 
mushrooms in the hollow of a tree : placed be- 
side each other, we stay there always. I alone 
do not change for thee, just as thou dost not 
change for thy old wife/ 

" Vasili lifted his face, which he had hidden 
in his hands, and embraced his companion more 
tenderly than he had ever done, even in his 
youth. She had consoled him in his disap- 
pointment." 

Were we not right in speaking here of the 

1 A Russian proverb says, "Alone as a finger." — Tra?tslator' , s 
note, quoted by author. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 199 

pathetic, and was it not well that we drew the 
reader's attention to this good old word ? It 
expresses an old idea, which, with no offence 
to the lovers of the commonplace, is not yet 
ready to perish. It is the mistake of the 
French realists, 2 to take coolness for strength, 
and they claim to be considered very strong 
men. Turgeniefs great superiority consists in 
his having no pretension, not even to be trivial 
and common. He does not make it a matter 
of pride to stay on the hither side of the truth. 

1 It is only just to make exception in favor of Alfonse Daudet. 
His talent is largely made up of sentiment, and even of sentimen- 
tality. — Author 1 s note* 



200 IVAN TURGENIEF. 



V. 

In this study of Turgenief, I do not flatter 
myself that I have pointed out all the aspects 
of a character so varied, — that I have shown all 
the traits of a nature so complex. Yet it would 
be a serious lack if I did not explain Turgenief s 
relationship to the writers of his country, or if 
I neglected the great number of criticisms 
which he has passed, in his letters to his 
friends, in regard to the literary movement 
of the last thirty years. 

He characterizes the epoch to which he be- 
longs. It is still, in his opinion, an epoch "of 
transition." He deplores the lack of union, 
the want of solidarity, in the men who in 
/ Russia hold this weapon, — the pen ; and who 
might, by concentrating their efforts, triumph 
over so many obstacles against which, in their 
isolation, they run a-muck and bruise them- 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 201 

selves. " Each one sings his own song, and 
follows his lonely path." 

He speaks without too much feeling about 
his enemies, unless he finds a settled aversion 
for their work, and for their conception of art. 
" I am sorry for Tchernuishevsky's dryness, his 
tendency to crudeness, his unceremonious treat- 
ment of living writers ; but I find nothing in him 
corpse-like. I see a living fountain spouting." 
To be sure, he has little to praise in the man 
of whom he thus speaks ; but malice, arising 
from personal attacks, could not draw him far 
from the truth. " These are spring waters," 
said he in regard to certain injurious writings 
directed against him. " They will run off, and 
no trace of them will be left." 

It is not the same with him when teachings 
wound him, and when the literary form disgusts 
him. After having loved Nekrasof, he goes so 
far as no longer to recognize any talent in him, 
so shocked, so disgusted, is he by his inten- 
tional brutalities. His verses " leave behind 
them an after-taste which makes me nause- 
ated." "What a son of a dog!" he says in 
another place. " He is a vulture, ravening and 



202 IVAN TURGEXIEF. 

gorging." But Xekrasof ■ died before him ; and 
he modifies, he explains the judgment which 
he had passed upon him. " Xo matter if the 
young have been infatuated with him, this has 
done no harm. The chords set in vibration by 
his poetry (if you can give the name of poetry 
to what he wrote) are good chords. But when 

St. , addressing these young people, tells 

them that they are right in placing Xekrasof 
above Pushkin and Lermontof, 2 and tells them 
so with an imperturbable smile, I find it hard 
to restrain my indignation, and I repeat the 
lines of Schiller: — 

* I have seen splendid crowns of glory woven for most 
common brows.' n 

His early sympathy for the novelist Dosto- 
yevsky 3 was soon changed to dislike, owing to 

1 Nikolai Alekseyevitch Xekrasof. born in December, 1S21, editor 
of the Soz-rcnicnn ik from 1S47 till 1S66. Afterwards, when the Soz-re- 
tmennik was suppressed, he edited the Otetchestvennui Zapiski till 
his death, which took place in January, 1S77. He was eminently 
Russia's popular poet. — X. H. D. 

2 Mikhail Yuryevitch Lermontof, the author of the great poem 
Demon, and other verses inspired by the Caucasus, was born in 1S14, 
and died in 1841. 

3 Fe<5dor Mikha'ilovitch Dostoyevsky was born in 1S22 in Mos- 
cow, and died in March, 1SS1. His life reads like a romance. For a 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 203 

their differences of opinion. The sharp fea- 
tures in the character of the author of " Crime 
and Punishment " were not slow to disgust 
Turgenief. He could not be brought back by 
the reading of works, the clearly marked tend- 
ency of which is sometimes to put a check 
upon his own. He was not sparing of admira- 
tion for the " Recollections of a Dead House/ 1 
" The picture of the banya (bath) is really 
worthy of Dante. In the character of the vari- 
ous people (that of Petrof, for example), there is 
much fine and true psychology." 

But when Dostoyevsky's faults grow more 
pronounced ; when his qualities become extrav- 
agant, and themselves turn to mannerisms ; 
when this keenness, once so fine and delicate, 
loses itself in subtleties ; when the writer's 
sensitiveness changes into supersensitiveness ; 
when his imagination goes beyond the bounds of 
reason, and gloats over the pursuit of the hor- 
rible, — Turgenief does not hide his disgust, his 
scorn. " God, what a sour smell ! What a vile 

short sketch of it, and also for the translation of the scene from his 
Zapiski iz Mertvava Doma, so praised by Turgenief, see appendix. 
— N. H. D. 



204 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

hosjoital odor ! What idle scandal ! What a 
psychological mole-hole!" x 

Turgenief prefers as he debars, he loves as 
he detests; that is to say, with a passion which 
is contagious, and carries the reader with him. 
One should see with what pleasure he receives 
the works of the satirist Soltuikof, better known 
and more appreciated under the nom de guerre 
of Shchedrin. What a feast it was for him, 
when a new " Letter to my Aunt " appeared ! 
With what joy he applauded its satirical fea- 
tures which were "powerful even to gayety"! 
Soltuikof seems disturbed at the flood of hatred 
which he stirs up. " If you only had a title of 
hereditary nobility, nothing of the sort would 

1 A brilliant Russian lady, now in this country, writes to the trans- 
lator as follows : ' ; I am glad indeed that you escaped the transla- 
tion of ' Crime and Punishment.' You would never find any readers 
for such a book in this country. I could never read any of Dosto- 
yevsky's books through. It made me sick. My nerves could not bear 
the strain on them. I don't believe in pathology in literature. And 
yet another of my American acquaintances, who is thoroughly versed 
in Russian, . . . tried to translate 'Crime and Punishment,' but had 
not time to do it. He says he never read, in any language, any thing 
so powerful as Prcstufilc7iie i Nakazanie. Generally speaking, your 
countrymen have too healthy a constitution to appreciate such a novel. 
Let it turn heads among the pessimists in France and Russia, the 
natives of effete Europe." — N. H. D. 



e> 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 205 

have happened to you. But you are Soltuikof- 
Shchedrin, a writer to whom it will have been 
given to leave a deep and permanent impress 
on our literature : then you will be hated, and 
you will be loved also ; that only depends on the 
person." 

The most striking example of this generosity iF 
of Turgeniefs is shown us by the spectacle of V 
his relations with his great rival Tolstoi. From 
the moment when Tolstoi's first book appeared, 
Turgenief, already famous, distinguishes the 
young author, welcomes him as a new star, and 
feels impelled by an irresistible desire to love 
him. " My heart goes out to you as towards 
a brother." " Childhood and Youth " appear. 
Turgeniefs admiration is expressed in this fash- 
ion : "When this young wine shall have fin-~~ 
ished fermenting, there will come forth a drink 
worthy of the gods." 

Life separates them ; the most diverse mental 
tendencies still further increase this separation. 
There is even, at one time, an inopportune 
meeting, conflict, violent rupture, almost tragic, 
since a duel narrowly escaped being the result. 
There are noticeable in Turgenief, from that 



206 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

moment, movements of vexation. The admira- 
tion which he was the first to arouse in Tol- 
stoi's favor turns, becomes fashionable, and goes 
to commonplace unreason : still he continues 
to be glad that " War and Peace" is praised to 
the skies ; " but it is by its most dubious merits 
that the public want to regard it as unequalled." 
In his opinion, there are not such good reasons 
for falling into ecstasies about "Anna Kare- 

inina." " Tolstoi' this time has taken the wrong 
track; and that is due to the injlu£iic£^f Mos- 
cow, of the Sb^o^hiL^n^hilit^ of orthodox old 
maids, to the isolation in which the author 
lives, to the impossibility of finding in Russia 
the requisite degree of artistic liberty." 

But excessive strictures are rare in him ; and 
how richly they are compensated by the gener- 
ous crusade, which, from the year 1878, Tur- 
genief undertakes for the sake of popularizing 
Tolstoi in France, and of building him a pedes- 
tal which at the present time threatens to rise 
higher than his own ! If, unfortunately for 
French readers, a " Russian lady " had not got 
ahead of him, he would have translated the 
masterpiece which he liked the best, which 



IVAN' TURGENIEF. 20J 

seemed to him to giv e the highest idea of Tol- 
stoi^s great powers, — " Th ^ Cossacks/' 

In last resort, he contents himself with the 
most active propaganda in favor of another 
translation, that of "War and Peace." His 
correspondence shows him to us, going about 
carrying the book to Flaubert, to Taine, to 
Edmond About, to those who are capable of 
enjoying this foreign dish without further 
advice. He hopes that their articles will en- 
lighten those who need to be told in order to 
get the taste of it. His illness alone turns him 
away from this occupation which I have no 
need of qualifying : it is too characteristic. 

At the hour of death, Turgenief s last thought 
turns to Tolstoi. I beg the reader to go back 
to that admirable letter, to that short literary 
will, in which the dying author salutes, and calls 
back to the arena from which he is just depart- 
ing, his great rival in talent and in glory. 

It would be very strange, if having lived long 
in France, and having made precious literary 
friendships, Turgenief had not mentioned names 
particularly interesting for French readers. He 
speaks much in his letters of the contempora- 



208 IVAN TURG&NIEF. 

neous realistic school, and he judges it favora- 
bly, especially at its first beginning. He does 
more than enjoy the Goncourts and Zolas. He 
makes arrangements for them with the direct- 
ors of Russian journals or reviews ; he endeav- 
ors to have one or two thousands of francs more 
paid for their manuscripts, by giving them to 
be translated into Russian before they are pub- 
lished in France. 

Especially for Zola did he use his mediatorial 
influence. He seems very happy to help him ; 
nevertheless, he does not fail to note with his 
delicate and imperceptible irony certain amus- 
ing traits of character. "As far as Zola is 
concerned, you told me that you would pay 
more for his manuscript than Stasulevitch. I 
have informed Zola. . . . His teeth have taken 
fire at it." " In his last visit to Paris, Stasu- 
levitch, having made Zola's acquaintance, gilded 
him from head to foot, on the one condition 
that Zola should belong to him alone. So the 
European messenger ( Vyestnik Yevropni) seems 
in Zola's eyes like the fabulous hen with the 
golden eggs, which he must guard like the 
apple of his eye." 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 209 

The friendship, made of admiration and 
sympathy, between Turgenief and Flaubert, is 
well known. It is painted in Turgenief s letters 
in truly expressive lines : " I have translated one 
of Gustave Flaubert's stories. It is not long, 
but of incomparable beauty. It will appear in 
the April number of 'The European Messenger/ 
Perhaps two translations of it will appear. I 
recommend it to you in advance. I have en- 
deavored, so far as in me lay, to reproduce the 
colors and tone of the original. ,, Flaubert 
dies. Turgenief is so moved that he breaks 
with all his habits. He, so sober, so disliking 
noise, wire-pulling, puffing, puts himself at the 
head of a demonstration in the Russian journals ; 
and he opens a subscription for a monument to 
his friend. He speaks with genuine disgust of 
the low interpretations to which this interven- 
tion on his part gave rise. His enemies affect- 
ed to see in this something like the return of 
an old actor, who had left the stage, and was 
tormented by yearning for the scenes. 

It would not be well to dwell too strongly on 
Turgenief s judgment in regard to Victor Hugo. 
Turgenief was a true poet, but when he wrote 



2IO IVAN TURGEXIEF. 

in verse he never rose above mediocrity. He 
knew it, and he criticised this part of his work 
very severely. The quality of his verses is 
explained better when it is seen how narrowly 
and unfairly he judges La Legende des Siecles. 
The epic grandeur and originality of this work 
escape him : its swing is too powerful, and it 
wearies him ; its brilliancy is too intense, and 
it blinds him. He judges Victor Hugo as a 
poet of thirty years ago — Pushkin, if he had 
come to life — might have done: he did not 
much rise above the Byronian horizon. 1 

He is, however, more just towards Swin- 
burne, the English Hugo. But here, again, his 
criticism is superficial : favorable as it is, one 
can see that he has not had time to find his 
reasons, and touch bottom. 

The critical faculty is evidently less keen 
in Turgenief than in others of his friends, — 

1 This explains, perhaps, why he did not appreciate Nekrasof. 
Indeed, Turgenief, though his literary judgments are always inter- 
esting, must be taken with a grain of salt : like a true poet, he was 
not a critic. On the other hand, Tchernuishevsky, whose critical 
judgments Turgenief affected to despise, was a born critic, and his 
literary prognostications were greatly in advance of his time. See 
Appendix. — N. H. D. 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 211 

Shchedrin, for example. He it was who caused 
the scales to fall from Turgenief s eyes, and 
revealed for him what he himself felt some- 
what confusedly as to the often artificial and 
conventional character of our realists. " I 
would have kissed you with delight, ... to 
such a degree what you say about the romances 
of Goncourt and Zola hits the case, and is true. 
As for me, it seemed so confusedly, as though 
I had a heavy feeling over the epigastrium. I 
have just this moment uttered the Akh ! of 
relief, and seen clearly. ... It cannot be said 
that they have not talent, but they do not 
follow the right way : they are already in- 
venting too much. Their literature smacks 
of literature, and that is bad." 

Although he was warned, Turgenief was not 
the man to wish to put others on the lookout. 
The success of another did not fill him with any 
envy. On the other hand, the disappointment 
of those who were dear to him caused him real 
pain. After the failure of one of George Sand's 
dramas, he wrote this charming word : " If I 
had met her, I should not have said any thing 
of the fiasco of her poor piece : like a respectful 



212 • IVAN TURGENIEF. 

son of Noah, I turn away my eyes, and hide the 
nakedness of my grandam." 

He had recovered from his boyish enthu- 
siasm for the work of the illustrious novelist, 
" I cannot any longer hold by George Sand, any 
more than by Schiller, ,, he wrote in 1856. But 
in place of admiration for the diminished and 
collapsed merits of the writer, there was sub- 
stituted, especially in latter years, a touching 
worship for the truly virile virtues of the 
woman. 

This is the way he speaks of her, on the day 
of her death, in a letter meant for publication : 
" It was impossible to enter into the circle of 
her private life, and not become her adorer in 
another sense, and perhaps in a better sense. 
Every one felt immediately that he was in 
presence of an infinitely generous and benevo- 
lent nature, in which all the egotism had been 
long and thoroughly burned away by the ever- 
ardent flame of poetic enthusiasm and faith in 
the ideal ; a nature to which all that was human 
became accessible and dear, and from which 
exhaled, as it were a breath of cordiality, of 
friendliness, and above all that, an unconscious 



IVAN TURGENIEF. 21 3 

aureole, something sublime, free, heroic. Be- 
lieve me, George Sand is one of our saints." 
We cannot better finish this review of names 
loved by Turgenief than by letting the reader 
rest on this luminous portrait of George Sand. 
In the virtues which Turgenief ascribed to her, 
is it not allowed us to find many of his own ? 




LYOF N. TOLSTOI. 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 

I. 

Count L. N. Tolstoi was born on the 28th 
of August, 1828 (O.S.), at Yasnaya Polyana, a 
village near Tula, in the Government of Tula. 
He reckons among his direct ancestors one of 
the best servitors of the Tsar Peter the Great, 
Count Piotr Tolstoi'. Early left an orphan, he 
studied at the University of Kazan, entered 
successively the departments of Oriental lan- 
guages and of law, got tired of both, left the 
university, returned to his paternal estate, and 
one fine day set out for the Caucasus, where 
his eldest brother, Nikolai* Tolstoi, was serving 
with the rank of captain. He quickly became 
an officer, took part in the guerilla warfare in 
Circassia, returned to be shut up in Sevastopol, 
underwent the siege, was greatly distinguished 
by his bravery, and resigned at the conclusion 
of peace. 

215 



2l6 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

Count Lyof Tolstoi's works have not been 
all published in the order in which they were 
written. " The Cossacks," published after the 
" Military Scenes," and after " Childhood and 
Youth," it seems was written, in part, during 
his stay in the Caucasus. The romantic por- 
tion of the work may have been thought out 
towards the period when the book appeared, 
but the impressions which fill the book are the 
first which the writer took pains to note down. 
It is well to emphasize this fact from the very 
first moment : in the study of Tolstois works, 
we can make it a starting-point in our inves- 
tigation of the steps traced in the evolution 
accomplished by his mind. 

The " Military Sketches," collected into a 
volume in 1856, were produced in the form of 
articles in the Sovremennik (" The Contem- 
porary "). These tales bear the following sub- 
titles : " Sevastopol in December," " Sevasto- 
pol in May," "The Felling of the Forest," 
"The Incursion." They paint at once the 
energy with which the French invasion was 
resisted, and the monotony of the siege, more 
terrible than its dangers. The book narrowly 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 2\J 

escaped remaining in the censor's hands : this 
suspicious and petty critic was offended by the 
most beautiful pages. There is, for example, 
an admirable passage where the soldiers, in 
order to escape the irksomeness whereby they 
have been overcome in the long days, listen 
with truly infantile excitement to the reading 
of fairy-stories. According to the censor's 
opinion, it was a bad example. The author 
should have depicted the soldiers as engaged 
r in reading some serious work, capable of exert- 
ing a good influence on their moral state, on 
their spirit of discipline. "The attention of 
the army should be called only to useful litera- 
ture." Fortunately the book escaped this roll- 
ing-mill, and roused the Russian public to 
enthusiasm. 

As regards this album of impressions noted 
with incomparable vivacity of observation, 
vigor of tone, and energy of touch, Count 
Lyof TolstoX gave another example, which is 
like a first confession, in his " Childhood and 
Youth." The material of this biography is 
family life brought into the exact environment 
which the Russian nature, when very closely 



21 8 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

observed and very poetically described, can 
furnish. On one side external impressions, 
very accurately and very powerfully retained ; 
on the other, profound reflections upon self, 
and a very keen view in regard to the most 
secret and the least explored regions of con- 
sciousness : these are the two sides of Tol- 
stoi's talent ; these, from the very beginning 
of his literary career, are the two elements 
which will combine to form the great novels 
of the writer's maturity, " War and Peace " and 
"Anna Karenina." 

These masterpieces having been once fin- 
ished, Tolstoi turned aside from fiction to apply 
himself to pedagogy. The great painter of men 
becomes the instructor of children ; the creator 
of heroes undertakes the mission of populariz- 
ing the alphabet. 

At the present time we see him passing 
through a new transformation, and from peda- 
gogue becoming preacher. He propagates a 
new dogma ; or, rather, he is on his way to 
increase the number of Russian sectaries who 
seek in the Gospels a solution of the social 
problem. 






LYOF TOLSTOI. 2ig 

Soldier, literarian, agriculturist, popular edu- 
cator, and prophet of a new religion, — Count 
Lyof Tolstoi has been all these in succession. 
But the secret of these transformations is no 
longer far to seek : he has explained it to us in 
his latest work, entitled " My Confession,'' the 
publication of which has been forbidden in Rus- 
sia by the ecclesiastical censor. The work is 
read in spite of the interdiction, and it makes 
converts ; copies are hawked about ; it will not 
be slow in following the fortunes of " My Reli- 
gion : " it will be printed abroad in some sheet 
edited by exiles, and will be translated, doubt- 
less, in France. 

Let us find in this " Confession " the com- 
mentary on the strange existence which we 
have sketched only in broad lines. 

Every man has, so to speak, a moral physi- 
ognomy ; and this physiognomy, like the face 
itself, is more or less characteristic. In Count 
Lyof Tolstoi, this characteristic is the need of 
a fixed principle, of a well-established rule y 
of conduct. This principle has changed, and 
more than once changed, the formula which 
expresses the sum of his acts, and explains 



220 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

them, justifies them, which becomes enlarged, 
transformed, entirely reversed ; but what re- 
mains immutable is his attachment to some 
formula, his absorption in the article of faith. 
Count Tolstoi's soul is, before all things, the 
soul of a believer. 

He begins by believing in the ego. He 
started with a sort of Darwinian conception of 
v/the world, of the struggle of individuals, with 
the conflict of egoisms. For Tolstoi, the ideal 
at this first period of his life was individual 
progress. The aim of existence was to get 
above other individuals, and to subjugate them 
in some degree by his own superiority. "I 
tried at first to cultivate the will in me ; I laid 
down rules which I compelled myself to fol- 
low. Physically I strove towards perfection 
by developing, with all sorts of exercises, my 
strength and my skill, and by wonting myself 
by privations of every sort, to be neither 
wearied nor disheartened by any thing/' He 
pitilessly analyzes the feelings which he had 
at this time ; after the fashion of La Rochefou- 
cauld, he tells us to what a degree he was the 
dupe, the victim, of self-love. Under the pre- 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 221 

text of discovering the progress made by the 
ego, and of advancing it towards perfection, " I 
gave in, above all, to the desire of finding that 
I was better not in my own eyes, not even 
in the eyes of God, but above all, but solely, in 
the eyes of others, in the judgment of the 
world. . . . And even this desire to seem 
better to other men quickly yielded to the 
single desire of being stronger than all others." 
All these manifestations of individual force so 
much esteemed by men, and called " ambition, 
passion for power, cupidity, pleasure, pride, 
wrath, vengeance," — Tolstoi also admired 
them, coveted them, and finally realized them 
to such a degree as to rouse admiration and 
envy. " Just as in my life I offered homage to 
strength and to the beauty of strength, so in my 
works I most often sang all the manifestations 
of individual force ; and yet I pretended to love 
truth, and boasted of it ! In reality I loved 
only force, and when I found it without alloy 
of folly, I took it for truth." We shall see in 
studying " The Cossacks " to what a degree 
Tolstoi's first ideal, followed and realized espe- 
cially during his stay in the Caucacus, is 



222 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

reflected in this work, which is the actual 
product, if not the immediate outcome, of his 
residence there. 

At the age of twenty-six Tolstoi' changes his 
environment : he leaves the army and the bas- 
tions of Sevastopol, and passes directly into 
the circles of St. Petersburg where the famous 
writers are gathered. He is welcomed, feted, 
placed at the very first in the front rank. He 
changes his whole manner of existence; but 
he changes it in the name of a new faith, the 
faith in the " mission of the men of thought." 
This mission consists in teaching other men. 
" Teaching them what ? I had not the slightest 
idea myself. But I was paid for it in ready 
money. I had a magnificent table, a sumptuous 
dwelling. I had women, I had society, I had 
glory. What I taught could not help being 
very good." At the end of two or three years 
of this existence, Tolstoi' begins to doubt the 
infallibility of his literary faith : he applies to 
the settling of the question his dissolvent analy- 
sis. He bethinks himself to discuss also the 
moral worth of the priests of this faith, of the 
writers. " They were almost all immoral men ; 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 223 

and the great majority were bad men, of no 
character, and in no respect less so than the 
boon companions of yore, of the time when my 
life was only a round of gayety and disorder." 
A sort of misanthropy seizes Tolstoi' as the 
result of his inquiry. A new Alceste, he hotly 
tears himself away from the perverse environ- 
ment of literary people, and begins to hunt up 
and down the world for the support of a newv^ 
conviction. 

After having v isited foreign lands, interviewed, 
philosophe rs, questioned the men of "the van- 
guard," Tolstoi returns to his country, per- 
suaded that progress must be realized , not 
within himself, but outside of himself . He 
becomes farmer, judge of the peace, magistrate,? 
instructor; he founds a pedagogical review, and \ 
starts a school. " I got upon stilts to satisfy 
my desire for teaching." In spite of r its simple 
and calm appearance, this existence let all the 
inward trouble, all the moral anguish, remain. 
" I left every thing, and I departed for the 
steppe. I went forth among the Bashkirs to 
breathe the pure air, to drink kutnis, and to lead 
an animal life." 



224 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

On his return from his visit to the Bashkirs, 
Tolstoi* marries. The joy of family life at first 
takes all his will, absorbs all his reflective pow- 
ers. " For a long time his life is centred in 
his wife and in his children : it is entirely 
monopolized by the anxiety of increasing their 
well being." At the end of fifteen years, he 
finds that he is still the dupe of selfish illusion, 
that this sacrifice to the greatest advantage of 
his family has simply turned him aside from 
the search after the real meaning of life. Is 
not his present existence, in fact, full of contra- 
dictions ? Long ago he has become convinced 
that literary activity is vanity, and yet he 
continues to write. What impels him to it ? 
'•'The seduction of glory, the attraction of large 
pecuniary remuneration." What moral princi- 
ple is there at bottom of all that ? Here begins 
a period of perplexity, of despondency, of bitter 
and morbid scepticism. The two questions, 
"Why?" and " What is to come?" force them- 
selves more and more upon his mind. By 
reason of attacking the same problem, like 
dots on the same bit of paper, they finally 
" make a hu2;e black blot." And Tolstoi's 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 22$ 

scepticism goes over from theory into practice : 
it is nihilism in the truest sense of the word.w- 
" Before I undertake the charge of my property 
at Samara, the education of my son, my literary 
work, I must know what is the good of doing 
it all. As long as I could not know the rea- 
son, I could do nothing. . . . Well, suppose I 
shall come to possess ten thousand acres and 
three hundred head of horses, what then? 
Suppose I become more famous than Gogol, 
Pushkin, Shakspere, and all the writers in the 
world, what then ? I found no reply." At this 
moment of strange trouble, Tolstoi' seriously 
considers the question of suicide. 

How did he succeed in escaping the entangle- 
ment of scepticism ? He takes the back track 
in his ideas in regard to humanity. He had 
long believed, " like so many other cultivated 
and liberal minds, that the narrow circle of 
savants and wealthy people to which he be- 
longed constituted his entire world. As to the 
thousands of beings who had lived, or were liv- 
ing still, outside of him, were they not animals 
rather than men ? I can scarcely realize to- 
day, so strange do I find it, that I should have 






226 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

fallen into such a mistake as to believe that 
my own life, that the life of a Solomon, that the 
life of a Schopenhauer, was the true or normal 
life, while the life of all these thousands of 
human beings was a mere detail of no account." 
Fortunately for Tolstoi', the taste for country 
life, and his intercourse with the field-hands, 
brought him to divine, that, "if he desired to 
live and comprehend the meaning of life, he 
must find this meaning, not among those who 
have lost it, who long to get rid of life, but 

^(L among these thousands of men who create their 

C lato$««* life and ours, and who bear the burden of both." 
trreqe- Having found only the leaven of doubt or nega- 
tion among the men of his own society, he goes 
to ask the germs of faith, the elements of reli- 
gion, among the poor, the simple, the ignorant, 
pilgrims, monks, raskolniks, peasants. In them 
— alone he finds agreement between faith and 
works. " Quite contrary to the men of our 
sphere, who rebel against fate, and are angry 
at every privation, at every pain, these believers 
endure sickness and sorrow without any com- 
plaint, without any resistance, with that firm 
and calm conviction that all must be as it is, 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 22J 

or could not be otherwise, and that all this is a 
blessing. The more enlightened we are, the 
less we comprehend the meaning of life : we 
see only cruel mockery in the double accident 
of suffering and death. With tranquillity, and 
more often with joy, these obscure men live, 
suffer, and approach death." Seeing these sim- 
ple souls so unanimous in their interpretation 
of existence, so obstinately bent on seeking the 
good by means of calm labor and patience 
capable of enduring any trial, Tolstoi' again 
begins to feel love for men ; and he endeavors 
to imitate these models. After ten years of 
initiation into the holy life, he reaches the 
most perfect renunciation. No longer to think 
of self, and to love others only, — that is the 
moral scheme which can alone reconcile us to 
existence, and reveal to us the good concealed 
under this apparent evil. The question is, 
therefore, not to think well, as Pascal said, but— 
to live_w &ll. And who shall tell us what itPterft. 
is to live well ? " The thousand who create 
life, and get from it all their faith." 

This expression, "create life," must be under- 
stood in all its senses. In the moral sense, it is 






228 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

explained only by its contrary. What do the 
wise men, the Solomons, the Sakyamunis, and 
the Schopenhauers do ? They destroy life ; 
(NkWd^aAihi they present it to us as an absurdity and as an 
evil. The calmness with which the humble, the 
simple, the pariahs of society, support existence, 
shows the falseness of the assertions of the 
thinker; and that which the philosophers in 
their supercilious speculation claim to anihilate, 
the modest practice of these virtuous men 
re-establishes, creates in a certain degree. 

Once fixed on the rock of this faith, which 
seemed to him unassailable, Count Tolstoi felt 
that it was his duty to study its dogma and 
formulate its credo. He wrote "My Religion." 
Later we shall return to this work, in which 
not only the propensities of the author's mind 

are revealed, but also the tendencies of a con- 

-■ 

Jjfcr siderable part of the Russian natio n. It is 
enough for us to note here the fundamental 
article of this religious law, to which Count 
Tolstoi assents with all his heart, like thou- 
sands, nay millions, of his compatriots : "Resist 
not him that is evil." This saying of Jesus 
sums up for him all duties, and gives us the 






L 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 229 

secret of all the virtues. We shall see in detail 
the applications of this principle to the conduct 
of individual and social life ; for the present, let 
us content ourselves with calling the reader's 
attention to the path followed by the man whom 
we are studying. He started with this prin- 
ciple, — the exclusive development of the ego. 
In practice, this principle led him to conflict, to 
violence, and to hatred. He ended with this 
principle, — the absolute sacrifice of the ego. In 
practice, this principle leads him to a life of 
abnegation, of gentleness, and of love. 

Between these two extreme limits of his de- 
velopment, we have seen all the mental states 
through which Tolstoi* has passed. These vary- 
ing dispositions will be found in his literary 
work. It would be running systemization into 
the ground to desire to show the writer going 
through this development, side by side with 
the man. But it is only just to remark to what 
a degree Tolstoi's earlier writings, his "Ka- 
zaki," for example, express his first ideal, that 
of the epoch in which he was taken up exclu- 
sively with force, and when he worshipped it 
in himself, giving it the name of truth. Later 






23O LYOF TOLSTOI. 

on in " Anna Karenina," one of his favorite 
^♦characters, Levin, will closely resemble Tolstoi* 
changed into a farmer, and already, in his draw- 
ing towards the rural populace, advancing to- 
wards the abandonment of all egotism, towards 
the spirit of sacrifice, towards that simplicity 
C of virtue personified by the peasant Feodor in 
\ the story of "Anna Karenina/' and the soldier 
l^Platon KarataTef in "War and Peace.'' 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 23 1 



II. 



Count Tolstoi's literary life is divided very 
sharply into three periods ; or, if the expression 
be preferred, his powerful talent, original from 
the very first, has passed through three phases. 
He began by writing works which are mainly 
the working up of reminiscences or illustra- 
tions of personal impressions. In the "War 
Sketches," in "Childhood and Youth," in "The 
Cossacks," the writer confines himself to narra- 
tion. Of these three writings, the one that 
best shows Tolstoi's talent in the first part of 
his career is the romance entitled " Kazaki," 
which, to use Turgeniefs words, is "an in- 
comparable picture of men and things in the 
Caucasus." In a detailed analysis of this 
masterpiece, we shall find the definition of 
Tolstoi's manner at the time of his forceful 
youth. 

The second period is that of ripe age ; it is 



232 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

filled by the two great novels " War and Peace/' 
and "Anna Karenina." The writer's manner 
has singularly broadened ; even the dimensions 
of the frame-work of the fiction have taken an 
almost exaggerated aspect. " War and Peace " 
makes not less than eighteen hundred pages. 
"Anna Karenina" appeared in the "Russki 
Vyestnik, ,, not in the course of months, but of 
years. It is true that between two parts of the 
work the author stopped, as though he had lost 
interest in its publication. But the public did 
not lose its interest by waiting ; and when, after 
more than half a year, the narrator resumed the 
broken thread of his story, his readers found 
themselves, as it were, dazzled by the return of 
the brilliant characters of the romance, after 
this long and dismal eclipse. 

In the novels of this second period, argument 
forces its way in under cover of fiction. Thus, 
in "Anna Karenina," which is the story of an 
adultery, Tolstoi' has not only tried to present 
us with a very accurate picture of aristocratic 
customs in Russia ; he has not only wished to 
show as the centre and powerful fascination in 
this series of pictures, the very subtle, very 



LYOF TOLSTOI 233 

penetrating, very accurate study of a soul 
wounded by love, the wound of which becomes 
more and more painful under the effect of the 
friction and worriments following her first fault : 
but he has also wished to attack, to settle in 
his own way, a problem in the social order ; — 
he wished to express his opinion about mar- 
riage, about separation, about divorce, about 
celibacy, about unions freely agreed upon and 
religiously maintained. 

" War and Peace," likewise, is a sort of sem- 
military, semi-domestic epos ; or, if you like, it 
is a broad study of Russian life, and especially 
of aristocratic life, whether in the camps, 
whether in the parlors, whether in the resi- 
dences of the proprietors during the first quar- 
ter of this century, and more especially at the 
time of the invasion. But within this ample 
scope the author expresses his theories on mili- v ^ 
tary art, his private opinions on the state of 
war and on the state of peace, his philosophic 
doctrine of destiny, or his religious fatalism. 
Some of the characters in " War and Peace " 
seem at certain times to give a prophetic hint 
of the dogma which Count Tolstoi will adopt a 



234 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

little later. In Pierre Bezukhof are seen the 
aspirations towards the ideal which the author 

/ of " My Religion " will soon be preaching to 

(^ men. 

If his teaching at this time encroaches on 
the romance, still it understood how to use mar- 
vellously well that vehicle for dissemination 
wherever the Russian language is spoken ; and 
we shall see, in analyzing them, that the two 
works of Tolstoi'' s second manner show a power 
and a brilliancy that are truly Shaksperian. 
But the mysticism, traces of which are found in 
these works, will develop in their author tp such 
a degree as to make him look upon a novel as 
an object of scandal, as a " flood of oil thrown 
on the fire of erotic sensuality." He will there- 
fore renounce the inventions of romance ; he 
will sacrifice fiction, which now he calls " licen- 
tious ; " he will not take up the pen, except to 
perform the work of a doctor or an evangelist ; 
he will write "My Confession," "My Religion," 
the "Commentary on the Gospels." Of these 
three works which illustrate Count Lyof Tol- 
stoi's third manner, the reader will be interested 
especially in knowing about the first two. He 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 235 

will even find that we have already said enough 
about "My Confession/' and he will take it 
kindly if we reserve merely "My Religion " for 
analysis. In return, he will allow us to dwell 
upon it, and to speak of it entirely at our ease. 
Before entering upon the study of "The Cos- 
sacks/' it will not be idle to run quickly over a 
little story which might serve in place of an 
introduction to a translation of this romance. 
This story, consisting of only a few pages, is 
entitled "Recollections of a Scorer." 1 It is the 
story of a rich young man, who, having full con- 
trol of his fortune, is led by laziness in a short 
time to degradation and ruin. Xekliudof falls 
into the society of debauchees and professional 
gamblers. They pluck him, and ruin him. At 
his first appearance in this society, he has a 
feeble nature, but not vulgar. He had some 
honor: disgusted by the lowness of one of the 
gamblers, he demands reparation, calls him a 
coward when he refuses to fight, and compels 
him to leave the club forever. He had a sense 
of shame : on the day following a most debasing 
night, when he had been made intoxicated and 
initiated into all the depths of debauchery, he 

1 Zapiski Markcra. 



236 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

bursts into tears, declaring that he will never 
forgive either himself or his companions in the 
orgie. Passion for gambling keeps him bound 
to them ; he sinks so low that soon he plays, 
not only with his habitual partners, but with the 
servant who fills the functions of scorer. One 
by one he descends all the steps of a sickening 
and abject degradation. He is ruined, and dis- 
appears. 1 

He returns one fine day, enters the club, asks 
for writing materials, and, having finished his 
letter, summons the scorer : " I would like to 
try one more game with you." He gains. 
"Haven't I learned to play well? Hey?" — 
"Very well." — "Now go and order my car- 
riage." " He started to walk up and down the 

1 Count Tolstoi himself apparently narrowly escaped a similar 
fate. His brother-in-law induced him to give up gambling ; but, after 
he went to Teheran, he fell into his old habits, and incurred such 
debts that he was unable to pay them. He tells how full of despair 
he was at the thought of a certain note falling due when he had noth- 
ing wherewith to meet it. He began to pray ; and, as though in answer 
to his prayer, he received a playfully sarcastic letter from his brother, 
enclosing the dreaded note which a brother officer had generously 
refused to press or even collect. Yashvin's passion for the gaming- 
table, in Anna Karenina, is also a reminiscence of this wild-oats period 
in Count Tolstoi's life. All true fiction must be fact. — N. H. D. 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 237 

room. Not suspecting any thing, I went down 
to call his carriage ; but there was no carriage 
there. I went up-stairs again ; and, as I ap- 
proached the billiard-room, I thought I heard a 
slight noise, like a knock with a cue. I went in. 
I noticed a strange smell. I looked around : 
what did I see ? He was stretched out on the 
floor, bathed in his own blood ... a pistol 
near him. I was so terror-struck that I could 
not make a sound. He gave a few signs of life ; 
he stretched out his legs, gave the death-rattle, 
and all was over." 

If this young Russian had possessed a strong- 
er nature or less enfeebled elasticity, he would 
have done like Olenin, the hero of "The Cos- 
sacks," or like Tolstoi', who is himself repre- 
sented under that name. He would have torn 
himself from his habits ; he would have started 
for the Far East : he would have been certain 
to find there enough new impressions to refresh 
his weary brain ; enough manly occupations or 
vivifying pleasures to strengthen his nerves, 
and build up his muscles; enough perils and 
accidents or proofs of every kind to regen- 
erate his soul, purify it from the tares of vice, 



238 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

and again raise the wheat of more than one 
virtue. 

Tolstoi' was not the first of these superficially 
blase emigrants who went off to Asia to find 
a powerful diversion from irksomeness, from 
the disgust of an idle and disorderly existence. 
Pushkin had pointed out the road for him ; and 
the author of " The Gypsies " had himself fol- 
lowed the traces already marked through the 
desert by the britchka which carried Griboye- 
dof, and the ox-cart which brought him back. 1 

"On the high river bank," says Pushkin, "I 
saw before me the fortress of Herhera. Three 
torrents, with roar and foam, come tumbling 
down the banks. I had just crossed the river. 
Two oxen, hitched to an arba } were climbing 
the steep road. A few Georgians accompa- 
nied the arba. i Where from?' I asked them. 
'From Teheran.' — 'What are you carrying?' 
— 'Griboyed.' It was the body of the assassi- 

1 Aleksander Sergeyevitch Griboyedof was born in January, 1795, 
and died in 1829. He studied law at first, but at the age of seventeen 
entered the army, and afterwards the college of foreign affairs, the 
service of which took him to Persia and Georgia, where a part of his 
great comedy, The Misfortune of having Brains (Gore ot Uma), was 
written. — N. H. D. 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 239 

nated Griboyedof, which they were taking back 
to Tiflis." 

More fortunate than Griboyedof, Tolstoi* will 
come back alive, and, like Pushkin, will be able 
to describe this adventurous existence ; but he 
will describe it without embellishments, above 
all without exalting it. He will let the people 
whom he finds there, and whom he studies en- 
tirely at his leisure, appear in all the bold relief 
of their natures. He will not take away the 
strange grace and the perfume of the wild- 
flower from this nature in which he feels a 
voluptuous delight. 

The evolution of the romance is rapid and 
fascinating. We are at Moscow. The night 
is done. The busy city is waking little by 
little. The indolent youth are finishing their 
evenings. At the Hotel Chevallier a light, the 
presence of which is against the rules, filters 
through the blinds. A carriage, sledges, and 
a travelling troika, are before the door, near 
which the porter, muffled in his sJuiba, and a 
grumbling lackey with pale, drawn features, are 
waiting. 

In the dining-room three young men are fin- 



240 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

ishing a farewell supper. One of them, in short 
shiiba, strides up and down the room, cracking 
almonds in his strong, thick, but well-cared-for 
hands. At first glance we feel moved by sym- 
pathy for him : there is such an expression of 
life in his smile, in his heated cheeks, in his 
brilliant eyes, in his fiery gestures, and in his 
animated voice. He is off for the Caucasus, in 
the capacity of yunkerS 

Olenin found himself, without family and 
without curb, at the head of a great fortune, 
which at twenty-four he has already half 
; ft wasted. The dominant trait of his character 
is scorn for all authority. Yet he remains 
capable of every impulse, even of the most 
generous. He has experimented with social 
relations, with service of the State, with farm- 
ing occupations, with music, with love. He 
feels that he is blase, but he believes that he 
is capable of beginning life anew. He is not 
one of those men " who, born for the bridle, 
put it on once, and never take it off till the day 
of their death. " He has the spirit and the 
vivacity which impel him to pick up and cast 
far from him all the weight of servitude. 

1 Cadet, or ensign. 






LYOF TOLSTOI. 24 1 

After having followed a whole net-work of 
unknown and obscure streets, after having felt 
a softening of the heart during this drive, not 
about his friends, not about his mistresses, but 
about himself, as though his tears were homage 
rendered to all that he felt that was still good 
and beautiful and strong and hopeful in him, 
Olenin suddenly finds himself before the wide, 
snow-bound plain. He turns his mind to the 
past. He thinks about his farming, about his 
debts, about his follies ; and he comes to the con- 
clusion that he is, " in spite of all, a very, very 
clever young man." Having made the first 
relay, he endeavors to bring about equilibrium 
in his budget, so as to pay up his creditors in 
the briefest possible time ; and, his conscience 
being now eased, he falls asleep. He dreams 
of Circassian beauties, of battles, of glory, of 
passionate love, of some wild beauty tamed, 
civilized, and freed by his hand. His tailor 
Capelli, whom he owes nearly seven hundred 
rubles, comes across this gilded dream, which 
is rudely interrupted by the second relay. His 
journey is broken or filled only by these halts, 
by tea served at the station, by watching the 



242 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

rumps of the horses, by a few words with his 
valet Vanya, by a certain number of indefinite 
dreams, and, most of all, by the nights of sound 
sleep, such as is granted to youth alone. 

According as Olenin advances towards the 
Caucasus, calm takes possession of his soul. 
The evidences of civilization which he sees on 
the route are a trial to him. At Stavropol he 
is disagreeably impressed to find fashionable 
attire, cabs, and round hats. But as soon as 
he is beyond the city the country assumes and 
retains a wild and warlike character. In the 
territory of the Don the air becomes already 
so mild that he has to ride without his furs. 
Nothing is so delightful as this unexpected 
spring. But here is something better : clanger 
begins. At any moment they may be attacked 
by bandits. Then the mountains rise on the 
horizon. The first impression, at twilight, and 
from the distance, and through the clouds, is 
disappointing ; but the next morning at early 
dawn, in the clearness of the sky, they take a 
new and superb aspect. " From this moment, 
all that he saw, all that he thought, all that he 
felt, took on the new and sternly majestic char- 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 243 

acter of the mountains. All his recollections of 
Moscow, his shame and his regret, all his idle 
dreams about the Caucasus, departed, never to 
return." 

It is on the banks of the Terek that Olcniii 
is going to dwell, to struggle, to love, to hate,— 
in a word, to live, — for a number of seasons. 
It is this river, therefore, that Tolstoi begins to 
describe for us, with its heaps of grayish sand, 
and its border of reeds on the right bank, with 
its low, steep left bank, gullied and crowned 
with oaks or " rotten plane-trees." On the 
right are the villages of the Tcherkes, on the 
left the stanitsas (stations) of the Kazaki. " In 
old times the majority of these stanitsas were 
on the very bank ; but the Terek, moving 
annually north of the mountain, has washed 
them away, and now only the traces can be 
seen of thickly-overgrown ancient ruins, aban- 
doned gardens, pear-trees, lindens, and poplars, 
woven together with mulberries and wild vines. 
No one dwells there now ; and on the sand only 
the tracks of stags, wolves, hares, and pheas- 
ants, which love these places, can be seen." 

A delicious impression of buoyant air and 



244 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

joyous light fills Olenin's heart as soon as he 
sets foot in the NovomlinskaTa stanitsa, in the 
midst of the Kazak tribe of Grebna. His 
arrival in the clear twilight, when the whitish 
mass of the mountains stood out distinctly 
against the brilliant rays of the setting sun, 
is described with a vivacity of coloring which 
deliciously translates emotions never to be for- 
gotten. " Young girls in tucked-up petticoats, 
with switches in their hands, ran, merrily chat- 
tering, to meet the cattle hurrying home in a 
cloud of dust and gnats from the steppe. The 
satiated cows and buffaloes scatter through the 
streets, followed by the Kazak children in their 
variegated Tatar tunics. Their loud conversa- 
tion, merry bursts of laughter, and shouts are 
commingled with the lowing of the cattle. 
Here an armed Kazak on horseback, having 
leave of absence from his outpost, rides up to 
a cottage, and, leaning down from his horse, 
raps at the window; and in a moment the 
pretty young head of the Kazak girl appears, 
and one hears their gay, affectionate talk. Here 
comes a ragged, high-cheeked Nogai laborer 
back with reeds from the steppe. He turns 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 245 

his creaking arba into the captain's broad, 
clean dvor y and throws off the yokes from the 
shaking heads of the oxen, and talks in Tatar 
with the esaul. Around the puddle which fills 
nearly the whole street, and by which people, 
all these years, have forced their way, crowding 
against the fence, a bare-legged Kazak girl is 
picking her way, bending under a bundle of 
fagots, and lifting her skirt high above her 
white ankles ; and a Kazak horseman, return- 
ing from the chase, laughingly shouts out, ' Lift 
it higher, wench ! ' and he aims at her. The 
Kazak girl drops her skirt, throws down her 
wood. An old Kazak, with turned-up trousers 
and bare gray breast, on his way home from 
fishing, carries his silvery fish, still flopping in 
the net, and, in order to take a shorter path, 
crawls through his neighbor's broken hedge, 
and tears a rent in his coat on the thorns. 
Here comes an old woman dragging a dry 
branch, and the blows of an axe are heard 
around the corner. Kazak children shout as 
they whip their tops wherever there are level 
places in the streets ; women crawl through the 
fences so as to save going round. The pungent 



246 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

smoke of burning dung rises from all the chim- 
neys. In every dvor is heard the sound of the 
increased bustle that precedes the silence of 
the night." 

Amid these new faces, there is one whom 
Olenin catches a glimpse of the very first 
thing : it is the girl to whom he is going to 
lose his heart. How she comes upon the scene, 
this wild young maiden, with her noble features, 
her statuesque form, her gloomy and burning 
eyes, with her red lips, her golden complexion, 
her supple and nervous muscles, her turbulent 
blood, her savage heart ! She comes in with 
her cattle, which break their way through the 
open wicket, following a huge buffalo-cow driven 
wild by the gnats of the steppe. " Marianka's 
face is half concealed by a kerchief tied round 
her head : she wears a pink shirt, and a green 
beshmety or petticoat." She hides under the 
pent-house of the dvor ; and her voice is heard 
as she gently wheedles the buffalo-cow, which 
she is about to milk: "Now stand still! Here 
now ! Come now, mdtushka ! " How could 
Olenin escape the impression of "the tall and 
stately figure, . . . her strong and virginal 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 247 

form, outlined by the thin calico shirt," of those 
beautiful black eyes, which at first will shun 
him, but which, later will gaze at him "with 
childish fright and savage curiosity. " Love 
will be born all the more easily from the fact 
that Marianka is the daughter of the people 
with whom Olenin is quartered, and that he 
will find her in his path at every step. 

But this feeling is not destined to be met 
with return. If Marianka is Olenin's ideal of 
maidenly beauty, this civilized Russian cannot 
arouse in the young girl's heart any feeling of 
admiration, and, in consequence, no love. He 
is not ill-favored, or a weakling, or foolish, 
stupid, or cowardly ; but he has not the trium- 
phant beauty, or the marvellous vigor, or the 
ever-watchful shrewdness, or the pitiless cour- 
age, of the young Kazak, Lukashka. What 
woman would not love the latter? He is so 
tall and so well shaped ; he wears his soldier's 
rig so proudly, his torn kaftan, his woollen cap 
knocked in behind ; he has such elegant 
weapons, and such unrivalled skill in the use of 
them ! There is nothing sweet, nothing tender 
about him ; but the ardor and the life of all the 



24§ LYOF TOLSTOI. 

passions show on his face, with its black brows, 
with its falcon eyes, with teeth of dazzling 
whiteness. He appears to us for the first 
time at the Kazak post, near the Terek. His 
great hands are laying snares and traps for the 
pheasants, and he is whistling. His comrade 
(Nazarka), brings him a live pheasant, not 
daring to kill it. "'Give it here!' Lukashka 
took a small knife from under his dagger, and 
quickly cut the pheasant's throat. The bird 
struggled, but did not have time to spread its 
wings before its bleeding head bent over and 
fell." 

Whatever character Tolstoi gave these young 
figures of Marianka and Lukashka, he does not 
find that they express all that ideal of strength 
and power with which at this time infatuated. 
Accordingly he calls up the image of a more 
striking savagery, in the person of the old Ye- 
roshka, the colossal huntsman with his voice 
of thunder, his animal habits, his ogre-like ap- 
petites, and his childlike character. " Over his 
shoulders was thrown a ragged woven zipuu, 
and his feet were shod in buck-skin porslini, or 
sandals, fastened by cords, which were twisted 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 249 

about his legs. On his head was a rumpled 
white fur cap. On his back, over one shoulder, 
he carried a kobuilka [an instrument to catch 
pheasants], and a sack with pullets and dried 
meat, to bring back the falcon ; over the other 
shoulder a dead wild-cat was swinging by a 
strap ; behind him, fastened to his belt, were 
a bag containing bullets, powder, and bread, 
a horse-tail for keeping off the gnats, a big 
dagger in a torn sheath, stained with blood, 
and two dead pheasants. ,, This giant has, for 
distinctive traits, the discreet and silent way in 
which he walks in his soft sandals, and the odor 
which he exhales, " a strong, but not unpleasant 
odor mingled of fresh wine, of vodka, of powder, 
and of dried blood." He has an inexhaustible 
fund of anecdotes, about his past life, his hunt- 
ing, his exploits, his horse-thefts. Yet he is 
only a child, compared to what his father was, 
who carried on his back a four-hundred-pound 
wild boar, and drank at a draught two buckets 
of vodka. He likes to repeat this saw of a 
Western man, whom he knew : " We shall all 1 
die, the grass will grow on our grave, and that/ 
is all." He is stout and hearty for his seventy 



250 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

years, although a witch had ruined him a little 
with her spell. On the chase, in the woods, he 
does not cease to whisper, God knows what 
mysterious monologue. When he returns, if he 
finds some host at whose table he can sit, and 
if he can only have wine furnished according to 
the measure of his thirst, he gets drunk, until 
he falls stiff on the floor. Hunting scenes, 
scenes of love, scenes of ambuscade or of com- 
bat, go to make up almost exclusively the mat- 
ter of all this work. But all these scenes are so 
variously true, and so profoundly the result of 
experience, that the romantic thread designed 
to connect them seems almost needless. What 
reader, however, would have the courage to dis- 
engage it ? I should like, for my part, to give 
by way of analysis, and by short quotations, an 
idea of the most powerful scenes here pictured. 
I will present them in the order in which they 
come. 

Here we are in ambush, on the banks of 
the river: "They were hourly expecting the 
Abreks — as the hostile Tchetchens were called 
— to cross and attack them, from the Tatar side, 
especially during the month of May, when the 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 2$ I 

woods along the Terek are so dense, that a man 
on foot has difficulty in breaking through, and 
when the river is so low that it can in many 
places be forded." The Kazak Lukashka is gaz- 
ing at the sky, with its flashing of heat light- 
ning. He spreads down his kaftan at the foot of 
the reeds. "Occasionally the reeds, without any 
apparent reason, would all begin to wave and to 
whisper to each other. From below, the waving 
feathers of the sedge looked like the downy 
branches of trees, against the bright back- 
ground of the sky." He listens to all the 
noises of the night, the murmur of the reeds, 
the snoring of the three Kazaks who have come 
with him to keep his secret guard, the buzzing 
of the gnats, and the rippling of the water, from 
time to time a far-off shot, the fall of a part of 
the bank washed away, the splash of some big 
fish, the crashing of the underbrush as some 
animal forced its way through. " Once an owl, 
slowly flapping its wings, flew down the Terek ; 
over the heads of the Kazaks, it turned and flew 
towards the forest, with faster flapping wings, 
and then fluttering settled down in the branches 
of an old tchinar (plane tree). At every such 



252 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

unusual sound the young Kazak pricked up his 
ears eagerly, snapped his eyes, and slowly ex- 
amined his gun.'' 

Suddenly (it is now almost daybreak) a log 
with a dry branch floating in the river attracts 
his attention. He immediately notices that the 
log, instead of going according to the will of the 
current, and floating down stream, is crossing 
the river. Here follows several minutes of 
strange excitement: the whole inner drama 
which is enacting in this young savage's soul is 
expressed with so much truth and force, that 
you come to follow with him the voice of the 
ferocious instinct which controls him. He puts 
his gun to his shoulder and waits, while his 
heart is violently beating at the thought that 
he may miss his human game ; finally he draws 
a long breath and shoots, muttering, according 
to the Kazak custom, the " In the name of the 
Father and the Son. ,, The tree trunk, rocking 
and rolling over and over, swiftly floats down 
the stream, freed from the weight which it 
carried. 

And when the Kazaks come hurrying down, 
both on foot and on horseback (the first thing, 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 253 

in case of a surprise, was to send for re-enforce- 
ments), what a scene is that where the lucky 
marksman plunges into the water to go and 
bring his fish from the sandbank, and flings the 
corpse on the bank "like a carp" ! What barba- 
rous coloring in the exclamations of the specta- 
tors ! "How yellow he is!" says one. "He 
was evidently one of their best jigits" says 
Lukashka : "his beard is dyed and trimmed." 
While they are on the spot, the chief claims the 
jigifs gun, one Kazak buys the kaftan for a 
ruble, another promises two gallons of vodka 
for the dagger. 

But the marvellous fragment of this broad, 
animated, boldly lighted canvas is this group, 
this contrast between the living man trium- 
phant in his nakedness, and the corpse lying on 
the ground, naked also, but rigid and terrible to 
see under the strange coloration and the discon- 
certing expression of death. "The cinnamon 
colored body, with nothing on but wet, dark- 
blue cotton drawers, girdled tightly about the 
fallen belly, was handsome and well built ; 
the muscular arms lay stiffly along the sides ; 
the livid, freshly shaven round head, with the 



254 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

clotted wound on one side, was thrown back ; 
the smooth sunburned forehead made a sharp 
contrast with the shaven head ; the glassy eyes 
were still open, showing their pupils, and 
seemed to look up beyond them all ; a good- 
natured and shrewd smile seemed to hover on 
the thin and half-open lips under the reddish, 
half-cut mustache. The small bony hands 
were covered with hair ; the fingers were 
clinched, and the nails had a red tinge. 
Lukashka was not yet dressed ; he was still 
wet ; his neck was redder, and his eyes were 
brighter, than usual ; his broad cheeks trem- 
bled; and from his white and healthy body 
there seemed to rise into the cool morning air 
a visible vapor." 

As a reward for this expedition, the Kazaks 
who took part in. it are permitted to go and 
spend the day at the village. The victorious 
Lukashka steps up to Marianka with the same 
feeling of faith in his strength and in his skill 
as he had had the evening before while lying in 
wait for the enemy. He asks her for some of 
the sunflower seeds which she has ; she offers 
him her apron. He comes close to her, and 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 2$$ 

whispers a request of her : she replies, " I shall 
not go ! I have said so." He follows her by 
the house, and there he urges her to love him. 
She laughs, and sends him off to his married 
mistress. He cries, " Suppose I have a sweet- 
heart, the Devil take her." She does not 
reply, but breaks the switch which she has in 
her hands. At last, " I will marry certainly, 
but don't expect me to commit any follies for 
you, never ! " He tenderly woos her. She 
leans against him, kisses him on the lips, calls 
him a sweet name, and, after pressing him 
warmly to her, suddenly tears herself from his 
arms and runs away. " You will marry," he 
says to himself, " but the only thing that I 
want is that you love me ! " He went off to 
find Nazarka at Yamka's; "and, after drinking 
a while with him, he went to Duniashka's, 
where he spent the night." 

In this struggle for existence, and in this 
battle for the possession of the beauty whom 
both love, why should not Olenin be worsted 
by Lukashka? The principal obstacle to the j 
triumph of the son of civilization comes from 1 
his intellectual advantages and from his moral I 



256 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

perfection. Do the best he can, he can never 
get rid of all his prejudices. He will be able 
only to approach that barbaric ideal which his 
rival without effort realizes by his natural gifts. 
In Marianka's eyes he could have only bor- 
rowed virtues, only the graces of a plagiarist. 
Olenin cannot change his nature by chan- 
ging his habits ; still more he cannot succeed by 
formulating a theory of life, in conforming to it 
in all respects the practical facts of existence. 
The contradictions which result from this con- 
flict between the past and the present, between 
long-settled ideas and present convictions, is 
strongly brought out by Tolstoi in many pas- 
sages in the novel. Here is one example: The 
first time that the young Russian goes alone 
pheasant-hunting, he gets tired, and lies down 
on the ground in the midst of the forest. 
Myriads of gnats settle down upon him. The 
torment of it nettles him, discourages him. He 
is on the point of retracing his steps ; an effort 
of the will keeps him where he is. Finally 
the feeling of pain is diminished, and at length 
it seems to him almost agreeable. "It even 
seemed to him that if this atmosphere of gnats 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 2$? 

surrounding him on all sides, this paste of 
gnats which rolled up under his hand when he 
wiped his sweaty face, and this itching over his 
whole body were missing, the forest would 
have lost for him its wild character and its 
charm." 

From this reflection he passes to others ; 
and, lying " in the old stag's bed," he thinks 
about his whole surrounding, — the trees, the 
wild vine, the frightened pheasants, the com- 
plaining jackals, the gnats buzzing and dancing 
amid the leaves. "About me, flying among the 
leaves, which seem to them immense islands, 
the gnats are dancing in the air and humming, 
— one, two, three, four, a hundred, a thousand, 
a million gnats ; and all these, for some rea- 
son or other, are buzzing around me, and each 
one of them is just as much a separate exist- 
ence from all the rest as I am." It began to 
seem clear to him what the gnats said in their 
humming. "Here, here, children, here is some 
one to eat," they sing, and settle down upon 
him. And now this taught him that he was 
not a Russian nobleman, a person in Moscow 
society, a friend or a relative to this and that 



258 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

person. It came to him that he was just a 
mere gnat, a mere pheasant, a mere stag, like 
those around him. The conclusion which he 
draws from this is quite different from what 
would be expected. Instead of saying, " Let 
us struggle like these beings, and like them let 
us live to triumph, or let us triumph to live," 
Olenin throws himself down on his knees, and 
beseeches God to let him live to accomplish 
some great deed of devotion ; for " happiness," 
he says, " consists in living for others." 

What did Tolstoi mean to insinuate ? That 
Olenin was illogical, or that he lacked sincerity ? 
It will be enough for him to find himself in 
Marianka's presence to forget his vow, and to 
sacrifice his morals to his instincts. 

How much happier the Kazak Lukashka is 
in having only instincts, and in not entangling 
them, in not fastening them down in this bird- 
lime of moral considerations ! This is what 
Tolstoi seems to have wished to be understood 
in a marvellous scene, an analysis of which 
cannot give either the bold design or the 
sombre coloring or the proportions worthy of 
an epos. It is the wholly Homeric parley 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 2$g 

about the ransom of the corpse. The brother 
of the dead man and his murderer are face 
to face : the former tall, stalwart, with red- 
dish trimmed beard, with an air of royalty 
under his ragged kaftan, honoring no one with 
a glance, not even looking at the corpse, and 
sitting on his crossed legs, with a short pipe in 
his mouth, doing nothing except occasionally 
giving an order in a guttural voice to his com- 
panion the interpreter; the latter with diffi- 
culty restraining the exultation into which he is 
thrown by the promise which has just been 
made of giving him the cross, and, in spite of 
his face reddened with pleasure, striving to pre- 
serve an impassive attitude, and whittling a 
stick of wood, out of which he will make a 
ramrod. 

The Tchetchenets has merely asked, as he 
takes his departure, where the murderer is ; 
and the interpreter points out Lukashka. " The 
Tchetchenets looked at him for a moment, and 
then, slowly turning away, fixed his eyes on the 
other bank. His eyes expressed, not hatred, 
but cold disdain.'' They get into the boat ; they 
rapidly push through the stream. Horsemen 



; they put the dead b 
n a horse, which si Lu- 

urt threat the Tchetchi 

It away. " Yi >U ha\ I us, 

;." Luk >hka bur 
ighing, "Why do you laugh?" ask oin. 

"I:* they had killed your brother, would you be 
The Kazak I at Olcnin, and 

laughed He seemed to have comprehen 
his idea, but he ! all prejudice. u Well, 

,'t this ne< 
.en't tl. 

a ? " 
The til Irinking, 

. zak women, 
of of pro- 

Ul j7/;/- 

' 'nin plunges into the 
litudes of the woods, and 
impressiona His lo rianka has ira- 

I until it presei 

He h 
blui 

i scruple 
him from putti nn ; but at 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 26 1 

night he comes to the door of the room where 
the young girl is sleeping, in order to listen to 
her breathing. 1 What shall he do? To take 
her for his mistress would be "horrible; it would 
be murder." To marry her would be worse. 

"Ah ! if I could become a Kazak like Lu- 
kashka, could steal horses, could drink tchikhir 
wine, could sing songs, shoot people, creep 
under her window at night when drunk, with - 
out any thought of what I am^or why I exist, 
that would be another matter. Then we might 
understand each other ; then I might be happy. 
. . . What is the most terrible and the most 
delightful thing in my position is the feeling that 
I understand her, and that she will never under- 

1 M. Dupuy, in his condensation of the story, loses the perspective. 
Olenin taps lightly on the window. " He ran to the door, and actually 
heard Marianka's deep sigh and her steps. He took hold of the latch, 
and shook it softly. Bare, cautious feet, scarcely making the boards 
creak, drew near the door. The latch was lifted : the door was pushed 
a)ar. There was a breath of gourds and marjoram, and suddenly 
Marianka's full form appeared on the threshold." But the prospec- 
tive interview is broken by the appearance of Lukashka's friend 
Nazarka, who has to be bought off. The next day Olenin writes a 
letter, which, being more like a diary, he does not send, " because no 
one would understand what he meant to say." In this letter occurs 
the passage which M. Dupuy quotes. — N. H. D. 



262 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

stand me. It is not because she is below me 
that she does not understand me : no, she could 
not possibly understand me. She is happy. She, 
like nature itself, is beautiful, calm, and abso- 
lutely self-contained." What is to be done, then ? 
Give her up ? Sacrifice himself ? What folly i 
Live for others ? Why ? It is the fate of men 
to love only the ego; that is to say, in this 
case, to conquer Marianka, "and live her life." 
Olcnin then makes himself drunk like a Kazak ; 
and, in the madness of intoxication, he offers to 
marry the young girl. She perceives clearly 
that that is only the wine that speaks : she 
drives the wooer away, and escapes him. 

Yet she feels somewhat moved in conse- 
quence of this offer ; and on the day of the 
stanitsa festival she is rude to Lukashka, 
though she has already become his acknowl- 
edged "bride." But a tragic event is about to 
bring forth abundantly the feeling which fills 
this young soul to overflowing. All Marianka's 
deep love for Lukashka will suddenly gleam 
out with unexpected brilliancy, like the gloomy 
sheet of the Terek in the flashes of the storm. 

The Kazaks have started out on an expedi- 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 263 

tion against the Abreks. Olenin follows the 
hand which is directed, but not commanded, by 
Lukashka. The engagement takes place. The 
Abreks are sitting in a swamp at the foot of 
a hillock of sand. The Kazaks approach them 
behind a cart loaded with hay. At first they 
do not reply to the enemy's shots. They wait 
till they are within five paces from the Abreks, 
then they rush upon them. Olenin joins them. 
" Horror came over his eyes. He did not see 
any thing distinctly, but perceived that all was 
over. Lukashka, white as a sheet, had caught 
a wounded Tchetchenets, and was crying, ' Do 
not kill him. I will take him alive/ The Tchet- 
chenets was the red-bearded Abrek, the brother 
of the one whom he had killed, he who had 
come to ransom his body. Lukashka was twist- 
ing his arms. Suddenly the Tchetchenets tore 
himself away, and his pistol went off. Lukashka 
fell. Blood showed on his abdomen. He leaped 
to his feet, but fell back again, swearing in 
Russian and Tatar. Still more blood appeared 
on him and under him. The Kazaks hurried 
up to him, and began to loosen his belt. One 
of them — it was Nazarka — for some time 



264 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

before coming to him could not sheathe his 
shashka. The blade of the shashka was cov- 
ered with blood." 

"When Olenin came back to Marianka, and 
wanted to speak of his love for her, he found 
her grieving. She looked at him silently and 
defiantly. 

"Olenin said, ' Mariana, I have come/ . . . 

"'Stop,' she said. Her face did not change 
in the least, but the tears poured from her eyes. 

" ' What is the matter ? What are you crying 
for ? , 

"'Why?' she repeated in a hoarse, deep 
voice. * They have been killing Kazaks, and 
that's what the matter is ! ' 

" ' Lukashka ? ' asked Olenin. 

" ' Go away. I don't want to see you.' 

" ' Mariana/ said Olenin, coming nearer to 
her. 

" ' You will never get any thing from me ! "■ 

" ' Mariana, don't say so ! ' 

" i Go away, you hateful man ! ' cried the 
young girl, stamping angrily, and starting 
towards him with a threatening gesture. Such 
anger, scorn, hatred, were expressed in her 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 26$ 

face that Olenin instantly saw that he had 
nothing more to hope for." 

He therefore goes away. The scene of his 
farewell with the old uncle Yeroshka has that 
exquisite pathos where smiles are mingled with 
tears. As a friendly gift at this solemn mo- 
ment of separation, the old Kazak gives the 
young Russian some advice which will save 
his life in battles. He casts ridicule on the 
customs of the orthodox soldiers. "When 'you 
have to go into battle, or everywhere, — I am 
an old wolf, you see, who has seen every thing, 
— when they fire at you,, don't go into a crowd 
where there are many men. You see, when 
your fellows are a bit afraid, they all crowd 
together ; and though it's more sociable in a 
crowd, it is more dangerous, because a crowd 
gives a good mark. ... I say sometimes, when 
I look at your soldiers," " I wonder at 'em. How 
stupid ! They go straight on, all in a mass ; 
and, what is worse, they wear red. How can 
they help getting killed? " And he breaks into 
tears as he kisses this young, " ever-wandering 
fool ; " but he manages to extort from him a 
gun, to keep as a remembrance of him. 



266 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

" Olenin looked round. Dyadya Yeroshka 
and Marianka were talking, evidently about 
their own affairs ; and neither the old Kazak 
nor the young girl were looking at him." 
(With these simple but pathetic words, the 
story ends.) 



LYOF TOLSTOL 267 



III. 

An analysis mingled with characteristic quo- 
tations might be able to give some slight idea 
of the romance " Kazaki," might give the 
reader a hint of its interest, its color, and its 
flavor of originality. An analysis of " War and 
Peace " can have no other aim, no other pre- 
tension, than to point out Tolstoi's design in 
this colossal work, and separate the moralist's 
tendencies from the story itself, which every 
one will want to read, and read again, in detail. 

In "War and Peace," amid a multitude of 
thoroughly interesting figures, there are three 
heroes who in some measure occupy the fore- 
ground, and who stand out clearly against a 
background of great variety, carefully studied, 
and peopled with living beings. These three 
characters are Andrei Bolkonsky, Nikolai' 
Rostof, and Pierre Bezhiikhof. The last men- 
tioned is not at first glance the one who is 



268 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

most attractive in outward appearances ; but it 
is the one whose moral nature is most curious, 
the one in whom the author has expressed his 
own inmost views, the one who, in his eyes, 
best illustrates the striking faults and the fun- 
damental virtues of a Russian nature. Bezu- 
khofs qualities are exactly those of the men 
of the Slav race : he is good, gentle, loyal, com- 
passionate ; his faults are indolence, apathy, 
fickleness in his tastes, incapability of following 
a given course, inaptitude in realizing his own 
volitions. 

Thus after having given his word not to at- 
tend a soiree at Prince Anatol Kuragin's, Pierre 
Bezukhof goes there, becomes intoxicated, then 
with the aid of another gay spirit, Dolokhof, 
fastens a police-agent to the back of a tame 
young bear, and throws them both into the 
river. Dolokhof is degraded ; Pierre escapes 
with a few months' exile from the capital. In 
the same way Bezukhof is perfectly convinced 
that Elen Kuragina's beauty and the dazzling 
whiteness of her shoulders do not hinder her 
from being dangerous on account of her 
coquetry ; he has heard mysterious rumors 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 269 

concerning her equivocal relations with his 
brother, the last of the debauchees ; he is per- 
fectly convinced that it would be foolish to the 
last degree to marry this admirable character, 
and that the best way of not committing this 
folly is to give up seeing her charming face, 
her seductive snowy complexion. Unhappily 
for him, her marble shoulders, neck, and bosom, 
one evening, came close to his poor near- 
sighted eyes, and all " is so near to his lips that 
he had scarcely to bend a hair's breadth to 
impress them upon it." Pierre Beziikhof does 
not depart more : he allows himself to be mar- 
ried, partly through infatuation, partly through 
feebleness. 

The marriage almost from the very first turns 
out ill. The rake Dolokhof has returned, and 
never leaves Beziikhofs house. Pierre long 
puts up with a situation, the meaning of which 
he does not suspect : the inevitable anonymous 
letter comes to open his eyes. At first he 
refuses to believe what he has been told ; 
but at the club where he meets Dolokhof, it is 
sufficient for him to find himself face to face 
with his wife's lover, for his jealousy to burst 



2 



270 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

forth with a flash like a discharge of electricity. 
The first pretext gives Pierre cause for a quarrel, 
and a duel follows. Dolokhof is a crack marks- 
man : he has no sort of feebleness. Pierre 
Beziikhof is near-sighted, awkward : he has 
never fired a pistol in his life. But, as if by 
judgment of God, it is Dolokhof who falls. 

Returning home, Pierre Beziikhof tries vainly 
to sleep, so as to forget all that has just passed. 
He cannot close his eyes. " He got up, and 
began to pace up and down the room with un- 
even steps. Now he thought of the early days 
of their marriage, of her beautiful shoulders, 
of her languishing, passionate gaze ; now he 
pictured Dolokhof standing by her, handsome, 
impudent, with his diabolic smile, just as he 
had seen him at the club dinner ; now he saw 
him pale, shivering, vanquished, and sinking on 
the snow. 

" ' And, after all, I have killed her lover," he 
said to himself; 'yes, my wife's lover! How 
could that be ? ' It happened because you mar- 
ried her,' said an inward voice. ' But in what 
respect am I to blame ? ' — ' You are to blame 
because you married her without loving her/ 



LYOF TOLSTOI. %7 l 

continued the voice; 'you deceived her, since 
you willingly blinded yourself/ At this in- 
stant, the moment when he said with so much 
difficulty, ' I love you/ came back to his 
memory. 'Yes, there was the trouble. I felt 
then that I had not the right to say it/ " 

If any one wishes to be assured of the pas- 
sage which I have just quoted, he must open 
"My Religion," and there read the commen- 
tary on adultery, and the condemnation of 
divorce according to the books of Matthew 
(xix.), Mark (x.), Luke (xvi.), and Paul's First 
Epistle to the Corinthians. According to Tol- 
stoi', marriage is indissoluble. Nothing, not 
even a wife's unfaithfulness, authorizes a man to 
repudiate her ; and, if he puts her away, he can- 
not marry another without himself committing 
the crime of adultery. We shall see this theory 
more clearly brought out in the romance of 
"Anna Karenina;" but even here Tolstoi' 
makes his hero Bezukhof conform to it. He 
will not allow him to claim the hand of another 
woman until the day when Elen's unexpected 
death shall have broken the bond which he had 
imprudently allowed to be tied. He exalts this 



272 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

imprudence into a crime. He thinks that the 
chief culprit was he who did not fear to con- 
tract a loveless marriage, or to seek in this 
marriage mere gratification of pride and lust. 

But Pierre acknowledges his fault to no pur- 
pose : his conscience will not speak as soon as 
his wrath is again stirred up by his wife's impu- 
dent cynicism and truly mad provocations. Elen 
comes into her husband's library in a rich and 
brilliant dishabille, with her calm and imposing 
air, "though on her slightly prominent forehead 
a deep line of fury was drawn." She reproaches 
her husband for the scandal which he has 
caused, twits him as though he were an imbe- 
cile, and declares that the man of whom he was 
jealous was a thousand times his superior. She 
claims that she has the right to berate him ; 
"for I can say up and down that a woman with 
such a husband as you who would not have a 
lover would be a rare exception, and I have 
none." Pierre, as he listens, feels a moral 
discomfort, which torments him, the sting of 
physical pain. 

"'We had better part,' he said, in a choking 
voice. 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 273 

" ' Part ? By all means, on condition that you 
give me enough of your fortune/ replied Elen. 

" Pierre leaped to his feet, and, losing con- 
trol of himself, flew at her. 

a ' I will kill you ! ' he cried ; and seizing a 
piece of marble from the table, he made a step 
towards Elen, brandishing it with a force 
which even startled himself. 

" The countess's face was frightful to see: 
she yelled like a wild beast, and fell back. 
Pierre felt all the fascination, all the intoxica- 
tion, of fury. He threw the marble on the 
floor, breaking it into fragments, and advanced 
towards her with uplifted arms. 

"'Get out,' he cried, in a voice of thunder, 
which sent a thrill of terror throughout the 
house. God knows what he would have done 
at that moment had Elen not fled. 

"A week later Pierre left for Petersburg, 
having made over to his wife the full control 
of all his property in Russia proper, which 
constituted a good half of his fortune. ,, 

In going from Moscow to Petersburg, Bezu- 
khof stops at Torzhok for relays, but horses 
are not to be had. He spends the night at the 



274 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

post-station. The bitterest reflections crowd 
upon his mind. " What is wrong ? what is 
right ? Whom must you love ? whom must 
you hate ? What is the end of life ? " " Every 
thing within him and without seemed to him 
confused, uncertain, distasteful ; but this very 
feeling of repugnance gave him an irritating 
sense of satisfaction. " At this moment a stran- 
ger arrives, an old man, whose "grave, intelli- 
gent, piercing gaze" strikes Pierre, and troubles 
him, in spite of its fascination. The new-comer 
knows Beziikhof by sight, and has heard of his 
domestic grief. He expresses to Pierre his deep 
regret at this "misfortune." Pierre, confused 
at the pity shown him, turns the conversation 
to the subject of a death's-head ring which he 
notices on the stranger's finger: he recognizes 
in it the mark of Free Masonry. The conversa- 
tion takes up the moral views and the religious 
doctrine of those who belong to the order. The 
old man urges the young man to take a differ- 
ent view of life from that of looking at it with 
horror ; not to escape from it, but to change it. 
"How have you spent your life? In orgies, in 
debauchery, in depravity, taking every thing 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 2*/$ 

from society, and giving nothing in return. 
How have you employed the fortune that was 
put into your hands ? What have you done for 
your fellow-men ? Have you thought of your 
tens of thousands of serfs ? Have you ever 
helped them, morally or physically ? No ! Is 
it not true that you profited by their labor to 
lead a worthless life ? That is what you have 
done. Have you striven to employ your abili- 
ties for the good of others ? No, you have 
passed your life in idleness. Then you married. 
You undertook the responsibility of being a 
guide to a young woman. How did you acquit 
yourself ? Instead of aiding her to find the 
path of truth, you cast her into an abyss of 
falsehood and misery. A man insulted you : 
you killed him. And you say that you don't 
believe in God, that you look upon your life 
with horror. How could it be otherwise ? " 

In this programme of a new life sketched out 
by the old Free Mason, we recognize the one 
followed by Tolstoi' himself, at a certain epoch 
of his life between the period of relentless 
struggle, of implacable egotism, and the period 
of absolute sacrifice, of humble renunciation. 



276 LYOF TOLSTOI, 

Pierre accordingly allows himself to be initiated 
into the order. I forbear to quote all the pictur- 
esque details of the ceremony. The novelist, 
using his rights, does not fail to throw a curious 
light on the mystic customs of the Russian 
aristocracy at the beginning of this century. 
What concerns us to note here, is the immedi- 
ate benefit which Pierre Beziikhof draws from 
this first transformation of his life. The simple 
prospect of devoting himself "to the regenera- 
tion of humanity " was sufficient to put meaning 
into a life which seemed to him impossible to 
travel. Unfortunately, in practice, his accom- 
plishments fall below his dreams. He contents 
himself with giving his overseer orders con- 
cerning the emancipation of his serfs, the ces- 
sation of corporal punishment, the reasonable 
regulation of labor, the building of hospitals and 
schools. The overseer, who sees through his 
master's naivete\ constantly plays it upon him, 
and imposes upon him in regard to the effect 
of the measures prescribed, but which he care- 
fully refrains from undertaking. Pierre is not 
the man to descend to the details of the reform 
which he has vowed to carry out : he is, above 



LYOF TOLSTOI. ^77 

all, not the man to make a bold stand against 
the difficulties of execution. At bottom, he 
would be very sorry if they had not been con- 
cealed from his sight. Accordingly he contents 
himself with a few apparent results, and is very 
careful not to look too closely into the lack 
which these appearances cover. 

Besides, his new faith receives a terrible blow 
the day when he tries to make one of his 
friends, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, share in his 
conviction. He encounters his bitter scepti- 
cism, which is the fruit of heredity (Andrei's 
father having been a " grand seigneur," of 
sharp temper and despotic soul), but it is also 
the result of the most painful collisions in life. 
Like Pierre Bezukhof, Andrei Bolkonsky had 
been the husband of a woman whom he did not 
love. He always treated her like a brainless 
doll, and never showed any other feeling in her 
presence than lassitude. His only attitude 
towards her was that of disdain. This child, 
whom he did not have the patience to make 
into a helpmeet, died in child-birth. His young 
wife's death has left in Andrei a sense of irre- 
mediable injustice, and he loves better to blame 



278 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

fate than himself ; although at times he is seized 
with such a violent wish to repair his fault, that 
he is driven by it almost to express his belief 
in immortality. He hesitates to utter his assent 
to the dogma of the future life ; but his wounded 
heart allows the exclamation to escape, " Oh, if 
it were so ! " 

To realize the distance traversed by Count 
Tolstoi' since the time when he put this lan- 
guage into Bolkonsky's mouth, we must look 
in " My Religion," at the place where the 
writer — rather, let us say, the apostle — en- 
gages in such a vigorous combat with the doc- 
trine of the resurrection of the dead, which he 
condemns as heresy. " Strange as it may seem, 
it is impossible to refrain from saying that the 
belief in a future life is a very low and degrad- 
ing conception, founded on a confused notion 
of the resemblance between sleep and death, 
a notion common to all savage peoples. The 
Hebrew doctrine (and much more the Christian 
doctrine) was far above this conception." 

Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, as soon as he 
enters the stage, strikes us as one of the most 
distinguished examples of that Russian aris- 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 279 

tocracy to which Tolstoi belongs, and which 
he wished to make known to his readers in 
" War and Peace." He has for his dominant 
features a clear, sharp, penetrating mind, and 
all the elegancies of his race, including a sn^~ r - 
eminent pride. During the peace, and when 
his best qualities are not called into action, he 
wears some " affectation of indifference and 
ennui" In time of war, and when "the weight 
of serious and real interests " will leave him no 
"leisure to consider the impression which he"*^ 
makes on others/' he will deserve all Kutuzof's 
praise by his solidity, his desert, and his attach- 
ment to his duty. He will give offence by his 
disdain, but he will win over to his side the 
majority of the Russian officers; for his birth 
gives him a certain superiority over his chiefs, 
which they themselves tacitly acknowledge. 
Finally, he has a few rare friends, whom the 
distinction of his character has carried even 
to passionate admiration. 

Andrei Bolkonsky's faults and virtues are 
found, with more striking features, and exag- 
gerated till they give an impression of humor- } 
ous terribleness, in his father, the old proprietor, 



2 SO LYOF TOLSTOI. 

Nikolai' Bolkonsky. With his powdered wig, 
his withered hands, his arms of steel, his bushy, 
grizzled brows, under which shine his youthful 
and brilliant eyes ; with his manias for mathe- 
matics, for turning wooden snuff-boxes, and for 
putting up buildings ; with his brusque speech, 
his sardonic smile, his yellow teeth, his ill- 
shaven chin, his Tatar boots of soft leather, 
his arm-chair tainted with a musty odor of to- 
bacco, — this despot is not to be forgotten. He 
teaches his daughter, the Princess Marya, the 
sciences. Before she goes into the room where 
her father is, to give him the morning greeting, 
the young woman, as she leaves the vestibule, 
" crossed herself, and prayed that courage would 
be given her." On the day when his son Andrei 
comes to announce that he is going away to en- 
ter the service, and that he leaves in his father's 
care his young wife, who is pregnant, and much 
troubled by a prediction which had been made 
to her after a dream, "the king of Prussia," as 
the old man is nicknamed, replies only with the 
words, — 

" 'Bad business, hey ; ' and he smiled. . . . 

" ' What is bad business^ father ? ' 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 28 1 

"'Your wife/ replied the old man bluntly, 
accenting the word. 

M ' I don't understand you/ 

11 ' Well, my dear fellow, you can't do any 
thing, you see ; you can't get unmarried. Don't 
worry, ... I won't tell anyone: but — you 
know it as well as I do — it's the truth.' He 
seized his son's hand with his lean, bony fingers, 
and pressed it, while his piercing eyes seemed 
to look to the very bottom of his being. His 
son answered with a silent confession, — a sigh." 

The weight of this paternal dictatorship, 
which constantly crushes the Princess Marya, 
has an effect upon her which it is important 
to note. She is thrown into a sort of mysti- 
cism, somewhat like that which we have seen 
come over Tolstoi himself. She has frequent 
interviews with beggars, pilgrims, the poor in 
spirit ; she listens to them, and gets instruction, 
not from their coarse anecdotes about the won- 
der-working Virgin whose cheeks sweat blood, 
but from their resignation at the torments of j 
life. Thus she succeeds in forgetting her most 
bitter disappointments, or at least in bearing 
them with a steadfastness which no stoicism 



282 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

can approach. She also gets from her faith, 
her gentleness in judging those who come near 
her. 

"AM, Andrei," she says to her brother, 
"what a treasure of a wife you have ! — a real 
child, gay, animated. How I love her ! " 
Andrei had taken a seat by his sister : he did 
not speak ; an ironical smile played on his lips. 
She noticed it, and went on : " Her little weak- 
nesses call for indulgence. . . . Who is there 
without some ? . . . To understand every thing 
is to forgive." And she forgives every thing, 
even the most cruel insult, even the wound 
inflicted on the most sensitive part of her sen- 
sitive nature, — of her loving heart. The hand- 
some Anatoli Kuragin comes with his father, 
Prince Vasili, to ask her hand in marriage, she 
being an heiress. While waiting to carry off 
this dowry with a high hand, he plays, in the 
Bolkonsky house, as everywhere else, his game 
of seduction ; and he has rendezvous with the 
demoiselle de eompagnie, a young and pretty 
French girl. Marya catches them accidentally. 
She refuses the marriage which she had eagerly 
anticipated. "I shall be called to some other 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 283 

good fortune. I shall be happy in devotion, 
and in making others happy/' She dreams of 
seeing the man whom she loved marry the one 
who has so shamefully insulted her. "I should 
be so glad to see her his wife : she is so sad, 
so lonely, so abandoned ! How she must love 
him when he forgets her so ! Who knows ? 
Perhaps I should have done the same." 

Andrei goes to war ; and Tolstoi takes us 
with him into a world of action, which he de- 
scribes with rare power. We are dazzled at 
first by the brilliant art with which the novelist 
moves armies, carries out the combinations of 
tacticians, shows the troops with their pas- 
sionate dash or their senseless terrors, repre- 
sents their leaders with their hesitations or 
their unconscionable activity, but all alive, true, 
recognizable, from the humblest of the German 
officers to Napoleon the great captain. We 
are singularly struck by certain of his pre- 
ferred methods ; like that, for instance, of being 
true to fact in his painting of what is always 
idealized. Napoleon has vulgarities of character 
and expression, and the unexpected meeting 
with them gives us at first a shock of admiration. 



284 LYOF. TOLSTOI. 

Instead of saying simply, "What realism ! " we 
exclaim, " What reality ! " Yet I do not hesi- 
tate to consider this portion of "War and 
Peace " as inferior to others. The historian in 
Tolstoi' inspires me with a certain feeling of 
distrust : it seems to me that the painter of 
battles, with his first-class ability, here and 
there takes advantage of our fairness. There 
is a tinsel effect in his painting; the details are 
far too numerous, and there is not so much 
variety among them as one would think. 

What is incomparable in the war part of the 
romance are the descriptions of military cus- 
toms, the scenes of camp-life, the impressions 
of certain hours of day and night, the reminis- 
cences of evening conversations, the effects of 
groups lighted up by the weird light of the 
bivouac, the heart-rending aspects of the battle- 
field or the hospital-wards. The marvellous 
beauty of all this wealth of feelings felt and 
experienced adds its glory to the more com- 
monplace and less valuable woof of the his- 
torical narration. Turgenief, who understood 
this, noted somewhere or other this difference ; 
but there are very few readers who can thus 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 285 

bethink themselves, and take account of their 
illusions. 

Wounded at Austerlitz, and taken to the 
French hospital, Andrei sees Napoleon ap- 
proach his bedside ; that is to say, he sees the 
one who, in his eyes, represents the ideal, the 
superhuman man, the hero, the demigod. At 
death's door, Andrei sees all things in a light 
which reduces them to their real proportions. 
To him all Napoleon's acts, all his words, all 
the motives which make him act and speak, 
seem empty of interest. He turns from the 
sight of what is only human, and, with his eyes 
fixed solely on the medal which Marya hung 
around his neck on the day of his departure, he 
endeavors to believe "in that ideal heaven 
which alone promises him peace." 

Scarcely recovered from his wound, Andrei 
returns to his father's home, which he reaches 
in time to be present at his wife's confinement. 
There is here an admirable scene, which will 
be surpassed only by the birth-scene described 
in the romance of "Anna Karenina." All that 
is dramatic, august, mysterious, in the opening 
flower of maternity has been expressed by 



286 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

Tolstoi' in these two passages. That of " Anna 
Karenina" is famous. We feel nothing of 
the equivocal impressions and the lugubrious 
effects, which, under the pretext of realism, the 
author of " La Joie de Vivre " will put into a 
similar description. But a parallel between the 
realism of Tolstoi' and the realism of Zola 
would carry us too far from our subject. 

The impression left upon Andrei Bolkonsky 
by the death of his wife has in no small degree 
contributed to develop in him the tendency 
toward dissatisfaction with life. But one day a 
young girl comes into the circle of shadow, and 
he instantly allows her to usurp its place. The 
memory of a luminous vision is brought into 
the depths of his soul. All the apparently 
sleeping springs of affection in his nature are 
stirred up by the appearance of Natasha 
Rostova. Chance brings Andrei to the young 
girl's paternal mansion : he falls in love with 
her, and with this new love begins the renewal 
of life. 

The house of the Rostofs is the third of the 
seignorial homes which Tolstoi' opens to us, and 
it is the one where it is the easiest thing to for- 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 287 

get one's self. Songs only are heard, merry- 
laughter, the chatter of fresh voices. The head 
of the family, Count Rostof, is a great proprie- 
tor, ostentatious, but free from arrogance, and 
is carelessly hurrying to his ruin ; but no one 
better than he understands the duties of hospi- 
tality. His wife is a sweet, good woman, ador- 
ing her family, and by her family adored. There 
are two sons in the house. The youngest, Petya, 
is a child at the beginning of the story ; but he 
will be seen in the ranks of the Russian army 
before the end of the book. And Tolstoi', in 
describing his heroic death, will write a few 
pages, the beauty and noble sadness of which, 
without any sense of detriment, recall Virgil 
and the episode of Euryalus dying beside 
Nisus. The elder brother, Nikolai' Rostof, is 
the typical young noble, born for military life, 
for whom the profession of soldier is the first 
in the world, who is too sound in mind, too 
healthy in body, not to carry everywhere with 
him his good-humor and his off-hand manners. 
But he returns to camp as to a second home, 
and weeps with joy to see his comrades again ; 
and he has no regret when he is once more in 



288 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

his tent, and he submits to the yoke and habits 
of military life with the same sensation of pleas- 
ure that a weary man feels when at last he has 
the chance to lie down and go to sleep. Tolstoi 
makes use of Nikolai Rostof just as he does of 
Prince Andrei, in order to make us present 
with him during a portion of the deeds of war 
which he wishes to relate. Rostof's impressions 
are not, however, like Bolkonsky's : they recall 
pretty closely the memories noted in the " Mili- 
tary Sketches " of Sevastopol. It is evident 
that Tolstoi', who has very largely put himself 
into each of his characters, has reflected him- 
self in this peculiar side in this one. 

In the house of the Rostofs, there is a whole 
swarm of young girls, — the prudent Viera, 
methodical and tiresome ; the gentle Sonya, a 
poor relation, who is loved by the son, and who 
worships him, even to sacrifice : she will forego 
marriage with him, so that he may be rich and 
happy. But a luminous face, dazzling with its 
freshness, gayety, and grace, is that shown us 
in Natasha, Andrei Bolkonsky's " bride." Na- 
tasha is so beautiful, that no one can see her 
without loving her. She is willing: to be loved 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 289 

without returning it. Happy in the effect \[ 
caused by her beauty, she mistakes all her 
coquettish, maidenly caprices for honest, serious 
sentiments. She has imagined that she was in 
love with her brother Nikolai's friend Boris, 
then with Denisof, then with Prince Andrei, all 
in succession ; but her passion has never yet 
been really awakened. It is waiting for the 
appearance of the last aspirant, the only one 
unworthy of being chosen; and then it bursts 
forth with frightful violence. Natasha meets 
Anatoli Kuragin : she yields to the fascination 
of his beauty, his boldness. He shamelessly 
addresses a few coarse, flattering words to her ; 
and she is intoxicated by this unrefined incense 
more than by delicate homage. She forgets 
that she is plighted to Prince Andrei : she 
allows herself to listen to words of love. She 
loves ; and she loves so passionately, that, with- 
out hesitation, she consents to all that her 
seducer has planned to lead her to irretriev- 
able ruin. She is willing to elope. A provi- 
dential chance prevents her departure. Pierre 
Bezukhof arrives in time to reveal to the unfor- 
tunate young woman that Kuragin is married : 



290 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

he gives him a pretty rough experience of his 
giant hand, and compels Lovelace to return 
Natasha's letters, and to pack off. 

Natasha 1 falls ill with sorrow, shame, and 
remorse. The doctors cannot get the better 
of this moral suffering. Religion alone puts 
an end to it. A lady who lives in the coun- 
try near the Rostofs comes to Moscow during 
Lent, and takes Natasha with her to perform 
their devotions. Each morning before day- 
break they set out, and go to kneel before the 
Virgin, "the blackened painting of whom is 
lighted up by the candles and the first rays of 
the dawn." Natasha prays with fervor, with hu- 
mility. She feels that she is gradually becoming 
somewhat regenerated ; and on the day when she 
is to receive the communion, she finds herself 
"at peace with herself, and reconciled to life." 

" ' Count/ asked Natasha of Pierre, as she 
paused, ■ do I do wrong to sing?' And she 
raised her eyes to his, and blushed. 

"'No. Wherein would lie the harm ? . . . On 
the contrary. But why should you ask me ? ' 

1 She takes a dose of arsenic, but prompt means save her life. — 
N. II. D. 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 29 1 

"'I don't know, I'm sure/ replied Natasha, 
speaking hurriedly. ■ But it would grieve me 
to do any thing which might displease you. 
I saw/ she went on, without noticing that Pierre 
was embarrassed, and reddening in his turn, 
'I saw his name in the order of the day. . . . 
Do you think that he will ever forgive me ? Do 
you believe that he will always be angry with 
me ? Do you ? ' 

"'I think,' continued Pierre, 'that he has 
nothing to forgive. If I were in his place ' — 
And the same words of love and pity which he 
had spoken to her once before were on his 
tongue's end, but Natasha did not give him 
time to finish. 

" ' Akh ! you ? That is a very different thing/ 
she cried enthusiastically. ' I don't know a 
better and more generous man than you. Such 
a man does not exist. If you had not helped me 
then and now, I do not know what would have 
become of me.' Her eyes filled with tears, 
which she hid behind her music ; and, turning 
around abruptly, she began to practice her sol- 
feggi, and to walk up and down." 

Thus begins the last romance in Natasha's 



292 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

life. She loves Pierre Bezukhof, not with the 
fanciful love which she felt for Andrei, nor the 
mad passion which Kuragin inspired in her, but 
with a pure, moral affection, founded on esteem, 
on the similarity of thoughts and feelings. This 
union is the only one which Tolstoi' wishes to 
realize for Bezukhof, for it is the only kind which 
seems to him legitimate. But, before it can be 
accomplished, it must needs be that the man to 
whom Natasha had plighted her troth should 
be no longer between her and the one whom 
she is to marry. Accordingly we are brought 
to witness Andrei Bolkonsky's death. 

The French invasion of 18 12 has roused all 
the powers of Russia. From the muzhik to the 
veltnozhy every one has felt the impulse of self- 
sacrifice. The Rostofs, whose second son Pe- 
tya desires to go as a hussar, are surprised in 
the midst of moving, by the arrival of wounded, 
whom it is impossible to transport farther. 
They have some of the furniture unloaded, and 
arrange a train of wagons. Among the mortally 
wounded whom they have thus received is Prince 
Andrei. He was struck by a bursting shell on 
the same day as Kuragin, and chance has so 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 293 

brought it about that the wounded man can be- 
hold on his bed of agony the man who stole 
Natasha's heart from him. This is a most 
powerfully dramatic scene. It is not the only 
one offered by this part of the book. Natasha 
discovers, during the journey, that Prince An- 
drei is in one of the wagons. She makes her 
way out during the night, and comes to kneel by 
his bedside. Natasha and the Princess Marya 
meet at this death-bed. The analysis of the 
wounded man's last feelings and sensations at 
the supreme moment is a marvel of divination : 
the ecstasy of the evening hours, the delirium 
of the moments of somnolence, are expressed 
with a power of imagination which makes one 
shudder. 

Meantime, beside the Rostofs' carriage walks 
a man of lofty stature, in laborer's attire. It is 
Pierre Bezukhof, who also has desired to find a 
chance to sacrifice himself. He did not join 
the army, like Andrei Bolkonsky, Nikolai' Ros- 
tof, Petya, and the others. Does he think, then, 
like the author of "My Religion," that he has 
no right to kill a man, even though it were an 
enemy of his country ? He stays in Moscow, 



294 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

with vague projects, which Fate, that mighty 
actor in the dramas of mankind, according to 
the author of " War and Peace," prevents him 
from putting into execution. He is captured by 
the French, and endures a most trying nomad 
captivity. But he finds among his comrades 
in misfortune a poor soldier with wounded 
feet, and body devoured by vermin, and from 
him he learns the great secret of existence. 
Platon Karatai'ef, in spite of his pitiable exte- 
rior, personifies the moral and religious ideal, 
which, as we have already seen, Count Tolstoi* 
definitely came to accept. As soon as the hero 
of " War and Peace," Pierre Beziikhof, has 
reached this limit of his development, the story 
has only to proceed of its own inertia to the 
conclusion. I feel that there is no necessity 
of delaying over the final scenes. The Princess 
Marya, whose father is now dead, marries Niko- 
lai Rostof, who had saved her life by quelling a 
revolt among the serfs of Luisuia Gorui, the Bol- 
konsky's domain. Beziikhof, at last a widower, 
is free to marry Natasha, 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 295 



IV. 

As in " War and Peace," so in "Anna Kare- 
nina," we shall find Count Lyof Tolstoi himself 
just as his own confessions have allowed us 
to point him out. As in "War and Peace," 
all the chief personages will have some of his 
characteristics, and Vronsky and Konstantin 
Levin, in turn, represent him in some peculiar 
aspect, in the same way as Nikolai' Rostof, 
Prince Andrei, and Count Pierre. Thus, in 
the discourse where Count Vronsky proposes 
a re-organization of his landed property, and 
claims that it must be based on the agree- 
ment between the muzhik and his former lord, 
Count Tolstoi propounds a theory which he 
long held, but which he has since gone beyond ; 
for, as we shall soon see, he has reached Com- 
munism. 

In the same way we recognize the ideas of 
" My Religion " in Levin's resistance of the 



296 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

patriotic outburst, or, to use his language, the 
unreflecting enthusiasm which rouses the Rus- 
sian youth, and drives one of the characters of 
the story, Vronsky, to enlist of his own accord 
for the defence of the Serbian cause. While 
protesting by his own abstention, and also by 
his tirades against the Slav committees and the 
enlistment, Konstantin Levin is already apply- 
ing the doctrine which Count Tolstoi will for- 
mulate in the maxim, "Do not engage in war," 
and on which he will make the following com- 
ment : "Jesus has shown me that the fifth 
temptation that deprives me of my welfare is 
the distinction made by us between our com- 
patriots and foreign nations. I must believe 
in that. Consequently, if in a moment of for- 
getfulness I experience a feeling of hostility 
against a man of another nationality, I must 
not fail to recognize, in my thoughtful mo- 
ments, that this feeling is false. No longer, 
as formerly, can I justify myself by the superi- 
ority of my people to others ; by the ignorance, 
the cruelty, or the barbarity of another people. 
I cannot refrain, at the first opportunity, from 
endeavoring to be more affable to a foreigner 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 297 

than to one of my countrymen." And if Vron- 
sky behaves differently from Konstantin Levin, 
it is not because Tolstoi' wishes to offset the 
conduct of the one to the views of the other. 
In reality, it is not from conviction, it is from 
despair, that Vronsky enlists. He goes away 
so as to forget, amid the excitement — or, as 
Pascal said, the divertissement — of a soldier's 
life the impression of the inward drama which 
has disturbed his soul to its foundation, and 
which, by a fatal, but unexpected, conclusion, 
has just bespattered -him with blood. 

The romance of " Anna Karenina " is the 
history of an adulterous amour : the climax 
of the amour is suicide. Is this suicide in 
the novelist's mind a moral penalty ? That 
would be a wholly barbarous conception, a sort 
of divine judgment such as would have been 
imagined by a story-teller in the Middle Ages, 
and Tolstoi' seems to have wished to forestall 
such a vulgar interpretation of his narrative. 
There are in the romance other criminal 
amours, and it is without any sign of punish- 
ment that the wholly immoral relationship be- 
tween the Princess Betsy and her lover leads 



298 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

them to scandalous conduct. On the other 
hand, the passion which unites Anna Karenina 
and Vronsky is a sincere, profound, almost 
solemn passion, in spite of the illegality of their 
behavior. The hearts of these two lovers are 
culpable but lofty. Besides, the more sympathy 
the author of the romance shows in their presen- 
tation, the more powerful is the lesson which 
he desires to draw from their moral torment. 
All the plan and all the interest of the work 
are here. What agonies of remorse this illegal 
union, so passionately desired, brings upon the 
guilty woman ! What deep mortifications and 
what vulgar discomfitures, what deadly humil- 
iations and what prosaic irksomeness, spring 
from this false situation, and ultimately make it 
so odious, so painful, that way of escape has 
to be found by an act of madness in a moment 
of despair ! 

Yet never were more conditions united to 
facilitate this union outside the law. Vron- 
sky's rank is too lofty for him to fear public 
opinion : he makes it, as it were, a point of 
honor to defy it, and he instals his mistress in 
his splendid domain as though she were his 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 299 

legitimate wife. Without much apparent diffi- 
culty, he makes his friends and his family treat 
his liaison with respect. Anna Karenina, on 
her part, loves Vronsky with a perfect passion, 
which is only intensified and not chilled by the 
feeling of sacrifices undergone. All that she 
asks from her lover in return is to be loved by 
him. She has made it a point of honor on her 
part to refuse the advantages of a divorce which 
her husband, Aleksei Karenin, at first offers to 
have pronounced against himself. She refused 
from a double reason of delicacy : she did not 
wish to add this gratuitous insult to the wrongs 
of which she is guilty towards this disagreeable, 
but upright, man ; above all, she does not wish 
that a suspicion of calculation should cast its 
shadow over the feeling which she has towards 
the count. 

A divorce, however, would put an end to 
many sentimental doubts causing misunder- 
standings, and to many subtleties of behavior 
resulting only in collisions. Vronsky demands 
the divorce with all the strength of his gener- 
ous pride. Anna Karenina scouts the idea of 
it with such jealous anxiety as a naturally noble 



300 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

woman can feel in preserving the remains of 
her dignity, which a shock of passion has 
thrown down and broken to fragments like a 
costly vase. This antagonism creates between 
the two lovers a secret source of bitterness. 
There are other latent troubles. By her mar- 
riage, Anna Karenina has a son from whom 
she is separated, whom she worships ; and the 
slightest remembrance of him causes her heart 
to thrill with that same strange feeling which is 
the precursor of motherhood. In consequence 
of her amour with Vronsky, she has a daughter. 
By a singular anomaly she does not love the 
child of the man whom she loves : she is vexed 
with her daughter for occupying in some meas- 
ure a place usurped, for monopolizing with her 
the maternal cares which it seems to her that 
the other child so grievously needs. If as a 
mother she has her whimsical but touching fits 
of jealousy, as a woman she has other fears, 
the absurdity of which does not prevent them 
from being very painful. She spends her time 
and gnaws her heart in trying to divine her 
lover's attitude towards her. She knows that 
for her sake he has renounced a most brilliant 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 01 

future ; she is afraid that she cannot fill his ob- 
jectless existence ; she sees in each attempted 
return to any occupation, to any distraction 
whatsoever, a proof of weariness, a confession 
of irksomeness, a sign of regret. 

Vronsky, who has made absolute renuncia- 
tion without thought of return, at last begins 
to suffer from this distrust : the more it grows, 
the more disappointment and secret vexation 
he feels. Here the loftiness of character 
which attaches him to his mistress, and which 
has made it easy for him to brave every thing 
for her, turns against the unfortunate woman, 
and impels him to resist the efforts which she 
makes to get fuller possession of him. It is 
easy to imagine what will be the outcome of 
this incessant struggle. Each day the angles 
become sharper, feelings become more touchy, 
actions rankle more painfully ; these two be- 
ings, starting on the bright and free pinnacles 
of love, have descended, without being them- 
selves aware of it, into the dark and suffo- 
cating regions of hate. The result of this 
inevitable decay of passion is made not less 
cruel, but more evident, by a wholly external 



302 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

complication. The divorce which at one time 
Aleksei Karenin had offered, he refuses when 
his wife, weary of such suffering, at last de- 
cides to ask him for it. Here it is that the 
future author of " My Religion " appears with 
his precise theory of the immorality of divorce. 
The group of mystics to which the deserted 
husband has been led to ask consolation of a 
religious kind declare, through the mouth of the 
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, that Aleksei Karenin 
cannot accede to his wife's wishes, and grant 
her liberty, without falling himself into a state 
of mortal sin. 

From the day when they learn of his refusal, 
Anna Karenina and Vronsky, in spite of them- 
selves, rush straight towards separation. Anna, 
in her dread of it, precipitates it. Vronsky is 
nettled at her ever increasing restlessness ; and 
before what seems to him pure ingratitude, he 
affects an indifference which he does not feel. 
Discussions, once rare, come in quick succes- 
sion, and become quarrelsome. This daily con- 
flict brings about an explosion, followed by a 
rupture. 

Vronsky leaves her. He goes to his mother, 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3°3 

the natural enemy of his mistress. As soon as 
she is alone, Anna Karenina feels as though 
torn in every fibre of her being : he must come 
back; she will fall on her knees before him; 
she will humiliate herself like a naughty child. 
She has written him to return, but she has not 
the strength to wait for him ; she hurries to 
meet him, and stops at an intermediate station, 
when by a telegram she informs him of her 
arrival. The train arrives. Only the count's 
valet appears, bringing a note in which Vronsky 
dryly announces that he is coming back. The 
tone of the note is interpreted by Anna as a 
new proof of the death of a love which in her 
alone has grown with time and possession. She 
tells herself that there is no more reason to live, 
and a series of fatal circumstances unite at this 
critical moment to hasten her to her death. 
She wishes to escape the inquisitive eyes of 
the loiterers at the station, who are struck by 
her strange behavior : she leaves the platform, 
and steps down upon the track. She remem- 
bers the terrible accident which a train-hand 
had met with at Moscow on the very day of 
her first meeting with Vronsky. A sort of 



304 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

reflex action takes place in her brain : a freight- 
train is coming along ; she goes to meet it. 

"She looked under the cars, at the chains 
and the brake, and the high iron wheels; and 
she tried to estimate with her eye the distance 
between the fore and back wheels, and the 
moment w r hen the middle would be in front of 
her. 

"' There,' she said, looking at the shadow of 
the car thrown upon the black coal-dust which 
covered the sleepers, ' there in the centre he 
will be punished, and I shall be delivered from 
it all, — and from myself.' 

" Her little red travelling-bag caused her to 
lose the moment when she could throw herself 
under the wheels of the first car : she could not 
detach it from her arm. She awaited the sec- 
ond. A feeling like that she had experienced 
once, just before taking a dive in the river, 
came over her, and she made the sign of the 
cross. This familiar gesture called back to her 
soul memories of youth and childhood. Life, 
with its elusive joys, glowed for an instant be- 
fore her, but she did not take her eyes from the 
car ; and when the middle between the two 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3°5 

wheels appeared, she threw away her red bag, 
drawing her head between her shoulders, and, 
with outstretched hands, threw herself on her 
knees under the car. She had time to feel 
afraid. 'Where am I? What am I doing? 
Why ? ' thought she, trying to draw back ; but 
a great, inflexible mass struck her head, and 
threw her upon her back. ' Lord, forgive me 
all ! ' she murmured, feeling the struggle to be 
in vain. A little muzhik was working on the 
railroad, mumbling in his beard. And the can- 
dle by which she read, as in a book, the fulfil- 
ment of her life's work, of its deceptions, its 
grief, and its torment, flared up with greater 
brightness than she had ever known, revealing 
to her all that before was in darkness ; then 
flickered, grew faint, and went out forever. ,, 

Certainly when one reads this brutally fright- 
ful denouement in the light of the motto of the 
book, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," one 
might be tempted to interpret Jesus' word in 
its Judaic sense. Yet it would be a serious 
mistake. It is very certain that this sudden 
and tragic end in the novelist's mind was meant 
for Anna Karenina's deliverance : out of pity 



306 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

for her, he granted her the favor of death. 
Death alone could put an end to the torment 
of this soul, and this torment began with the 
sin. Here is the true punishment of guilty 
love : all the illusion which exalted the senses, 
as long as they are pastured in " love's shadow," 
as one of Shakspeare's characters calls it, van- 
ishes as soon as one is sated of love itself. 

"What had been for Vronsky for nearly a year 
the only and absolute aim of his life, was for 
Anna a dream of happiness, all the more en- 
chanting because it seemed to her unreal and 
terrible. It was like a dream. At last the 
waking came ; and a new life began for her, with 
a sentiment of moral decadence. She felt the 
impossibility of expressing the shame, the hor- 
ror, the joy, that were now her portion. Rather 
than put her feelings into idle and fleeting 
words, she preferred to keep silent. As time 
went on, words fit to express the complexity 
of her sensations still failed to come to her, 
and even her thoughts were incapable of trans- 
lating the impressions of her heart. She hoped 
that calmness and peace would come to her, 
but they held aloof. Whenever she thought 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3°7 

of the past, and thought of the future, and 
thought of her own fate, she was seized with 
fear, and tried to drive these thoughts away. 

"'By and by, by and by/ she repeated, 'when 
I am calmer/ 

" On the other hand, when during sleep she 
lost all control of her imagination, her situation 
appeared in its frightful reality : almost every 
night she had the same dream. She dreamed 
that she was the wife both of Vronsky and of 
Aleksei Aleksandrovitch. And it seemed to 
her that Aleksei Aleksandrovitch kissed her 
hands, and said, weeping, ' How happy we are 
now ! ' And Aleksei Vronsky, he, also, was her 
husband. She was amazed that she could be- 
lieve such a thing impossible ; and she laughed 
when she seemed to explain to them that every 
thing would simplify itself, and that both would 
henceforth be satisfied and happy. But this 
dream weighed on her spirits like a nightmare, 
and she always awoke in a fright." 

That is the moral punishment. What keen 
psychology ! What an admirable commentary, 
and what a powerful interpretation of the "sur- 
git amari aliquid!" And it is not only her 



3°S LYOF TOLSTOI. 

punishment as a woman which Tolstoi' has de- 
scribed, it is also her punishment as a mother, 
when the separation, long postponed by the 
husband's own will, becomes indispensable to 
the two paramours, both of whom have returned 
from the doors of death, and returned more 
morbidly, more hopelessly, in love with each 
other than ever before. 

During the first part of this separation, Anna 
Karenina had wonted herself to think that it 
was her duty to give up all that had hitherto 
gone to make her happiness, and to leave in 
her husband's hands as a compensation, such 
as it was, all the elements of her past happiness 
which she had exchanged for another kind. "I 
give up all that I love, all that I appreciate 
most in this world, — my son and my reputa- 
tion!" She succeeds for some time in lulling, 
in deceiving, the maternal sentiment, in substi- 
tuting in place of her affection for her son her 
tender and constant care for the daughter, the 
child of her liaison with Vronsky. But Vron- 
sky is obliged suddenly to leave Italy where 
they have been together ; he and Anna reach 
Petersburg ; the mother is again in the neigh- 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3°9 

borhood of the house where her son is living ; 
she wishes to enter it, to see him ; she begs for 
permission, and it is harshly refused ; she de- 
termines to go to her husband's at any cost, and 
make her way to the child by bribing the ser- 
vants. The reader will not blame me for quot- 
ing this admirable scene. 1 

"She went to a neighboring shop and pur- 
chased some toys, and thus she formed her plan 
of action : she would start early in the morning 
before Aleksei Aleksandrovitch was up ; she 
would have the money in her hand all ready to 
bribe the Swiss and the other servants to let her 
go up-stairs without raising her veil, under the 
pretext of laying on Serozha's bed some presents 
sent by his god-father. As to what she should 
say to her son, she could not form the least idea: 
she could not make any preparation for that. 

"The next morning, at eight o'clock, Anna 
got out of her hired carriage and rang the door- 
bell of her former home. 

1 M. Dupuy adds, that he borrows " the inelegant but expressive 
translation of this scene " from the Journal de Saint Petersbonrg. 
In the present case, as in nearly all other quotations in the book, the 
originals have been used, which will account for greater or less varia- 
tions from the literal version of the French text. — N. H. D. 



3IO LYOF TOLSTOI. 

" ' Go and see what is wanted ! It's some 
banana? said Kapitonuitch, in overcoat and 
galoshes, as he looked out of the window and 
saw a lady closely veiled standing on the porch. 
The Swiss's assistant, a young man whom Anna 
did not know, had scarcely opened the door 
before Anna thrust a three-ruble note into his 
hand. 

" ' Serozha — Sergei Aleksievitch,' she stam- 
mered ; then she went one or two steps down 
the hall. 

"The Swiss's assistant examined the note, 
and stopped the visitor at the inner glass door. 

" ' Whom do you wish to see ? ' he asked. 

" She did not hear his words, and made no 
reply. 

"Kapitonuitch, noticing the stranger's con- 
fusion, came out from his office and asked her 
what she wanted. 

" ' I come from Prince Skorodumof to see 
Sergei Aleksievitch.' 

" ' He is not up yet,' replied the Swiss, look- 
ing sharply at the veiled lady. 

"Anna had never dreamed that she should be 
so troubled by the sight of this house where 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 11 

she had lived nine years. One after another, 
sweet and cruel memories arose in her mind, and 
for a moment she forgot why she was there. 

"'Will you wait?' asked the Swiss, helping 
her to take off her shnbka. When he saw her 
face, he recognized her, and bowed profoundly. 
'Will your ladyship x be pleased to enter?' he 
said to her. 

" She tried to speak ; but her voice failed 
her, and with an entreating look at the old 
servant she rapidly flew up the stairs. Kap- 
itonuitch tried to overtake her, and followed 
after her, catching his galoshes at every step. 

" ' Perhaps his tutor is not dressed yet : I will 
speak to him.' 

"Anna kept on up the stairs which she knew 
so well, but she did not hear what the old man 
said. 

"'This way. Excuse it if all is in disorder. 
He sleeps in the front room now/ said the 
Swiss, out of breath. ' Will your ladyship be 
good enough to wait a moment ? I will go and 
see/ And opening the high door, he dis- 
appeared. 

1 Vasha prevoskhoditelstvo ; literally, Your Excellency. 



312 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

"Anna stopped and waited. 

" ' He has just waked up/ said the Swiss, 
coming back through the same door. 

"And as he spoke, Anna heard the sound 
of a child yawning, and merely by the sound of 
the yawn she recognized her son, and seemed 
to see him alive before her. 

" ' Let me go in — let me ! ' she stammered, 
and hurriedly pushed through the door. 

" At the right of the door was a bed, and on 
the bed a child was sitting up in his little open 
nightgown ; his little body was leaning forward, 
and he was just finishing a yawn and stretching 
himself. His lips were just closing into a sleepy 
smile, and he fell back upon his pillow still 
smiling. 

" ' Serozha ! p she murmured as she went 
towards him. 

" Every time since their separation that she 
had felt an access of love for the absent son, 
Anna looked upon him as still a child of four, 
the age when he had been most charming. 
Now he no longer bore any resemblance to him 
whom she had left : he had grown tall and thin. 
How long his face seemed ! How short his 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 r 3 

hair ! What long arms ! How he had changed ! 
But it was still the same, — the shape of his 
head, his lips, little slender neck, and his broad 
shoulders. 

" ' Serozha ! ' she whispered in the child's 
ear. 

" He raised himself on his elbow, turned his 
frowzy head around, and, trying to put things 
together, opened wide his eyes. For several 
seconds he looked with an inquiring face at his 
mother, who stood motionless before him. Then 
he suddenly smiled with joy; and with his eyes 
still half-closed in sleep, he threw himself, not 
back upon his pillow, but into his mother's arms. 

" ' Serozha, my dear little boy ! ' she stam- 
mered, choking with tears, and throwing her 
arms around his plump body. 

"'Mamma!' he whispered, cuddling into his 
mother's arms so as to feel their encircling 
pressure. Smiling sleepily, he took his hand 
from the head of the bed and put it on his 
mother's shoulder and climbed into her lap, 
having that warm breath of sleep peculiar to 
children, and pressed his face to his mother's 
neck and shoulders. 



314 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

" ' I knew,' he said, opening his eyes ; ' to-day 
is my birthday ; I knew that you would come. 
I am going to get up now.' 

" And as he spoke he fell asleep again. Anna 
devoured him with her eyes. She saw how he 
had changed during her absence. She would 
scarcely have known his long legs coming 
below his nightgown, bis hollow cheeks, his 
short hair curled in the neck where she had so 
often kissed it. She pressed him to her heart, 
and the tears prevented her from speaking. 

"'What are you crying for, mamma?' he 
asked, now entirely awake. ' What makes you 
cry ? ' he repeated, ready to weep himself. 

"'I ? I will not cry any more — it is for joy. 
It is all over now/ said she, drying her tears 
and turning around. i Nu! go and get dressed/ 
she added, after she had grown a little calmer, 
but still holding Serozha's hand. She sat down 
near the bed on a chair which held the child's 
clothing. ' How do you dress without me ? 
How' — she wanted to speak simply and gayly, 
but she could not, and again she turned her 
head away. 

" i I don't wash in cold water any more ; papa 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 X 5 

has forbidden it : but you have not seen Vasili 
Lukitch ? Here he comes. But you are sitting 
on my things.' And Serozha laughed heartily. 
She looked at him and smiled. 

" ' Mamma ! dtlshenka, golubtchika ! ' [dear 
little soul, darling], he cried again, throwing 
himself into her arms, as though he now better 
understood what had happened to him, as he 
saw her smile. 

" ' Take it off,' said he, pulling off her hat. 
And seeing her head bare, he began to kiss her 
again. 

" ' What did you think of me ? Did you 
believe that I was dead ? ' 

"'I never believed it' 

" ' You believed me alive, my precious ? ' 

" ' I knew it ! I knew it ! ' he replied, repeat- 
ing his favorite phrase ; and, seizing the hand 
which was smoothing his hair, he pressed the 
palm of it to his little mouth, and began to 
kiss it." 

"Vasili Lukitch, meantime, not at first know- 
ing who this lady was, but learning from their 
conversation that it was Serozha's mother, the 
woman who had deserted her husband, and 



3l6 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

whom he did not know, as he had not come 
into the house till after her departure, was in 
great perplexity. Ought he to tell Aleksei 
Aleksandrovitch ? On mature reflection he 
came to the conclusion that his duty consisted 
in going to dress Serozha at the usual hour, 
without paying any attention to a third person 
— his mother, or any one else. But as he 
reached the door and opened it, the sight of 
the caresses between the mother and child, the 
sound of their voices and their words, made 
him change his mind. He shook his head, 
sighed, and quietly closed the door. ' I will 
wait ten minutes longer,' he said to himself, 
coughing slightly, and wiping his eyes. 

"There was great excitement among the ser- 
vants; they all knew that the baruina had come, 
and that Kapitonuitch had let her in, and that 
she was in the child's room ; they knew, too, 
that their master was in the habit of going to 
Serozha every morning at nine o'clock : each 
one felt that the husband and wife ought not to 
meet, that it must be prevented. 

" Kornei, the valet, went down to the Swiss 
to ask why Anna had been let in ; and finding 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 l 7 

that Kapitonuitch had taken her up-stairs, he 
reprimanded him severely. The Swiss main- 
tained an obstinate silence till the valet declared 
that he deserved to lose his place, when the old 
man jumped at him, and shaking his fist in his 
face, said, — 

" 'Da ! Vot! you would not have let her in 
yourself? You've served here ten years, and 
had nothing but kindness from her, but you 
would have said, "Now, go away from here ! " 
You know what policy is, you sly dog. What 
you don't forget is to rob your master, and to 
carry off his raccoon-skin shubas ! ' 

" ' Soldier ! ' replied Kornei scornfully ; and 
he turned towards the nurse, who was coming 
in just at this moment. 'What do you think, 
Marya Yefimovna ? He has let in Anna Arkad- 
yevna, without saying any thing to anybody, 
and just when Aleksei Aleksandrovitch, as soon 
as he is up, will be going to the nursery.' 

" ' What a scrape i what a scrape ! ' said the 
nurse. t But, Kornei Vasilyevitch, find some 
way to keep your master, while I run to warn 
her, and get her out of the way. What a 
scrape ! ' 



3l8 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

"When the ntirse went into the child's room, 
Serozha was telling his mother how Nadenka 
and he had fallen when sliding down a hill of 
ice, and turned three somersaults. Anna was 
listening to the sound of her son's voice, looking 
at his face, watching the play of his features, 
feeling his little arms, but not hearing a word 
that he said. She must go away, she must 
leave him : this alone she understood and felt. 
She had heard Vasili Lukitch's steps, and his 
little discreet cough, as he came to the door, 
and now she heard the nurse coming in ; but 
unable to move or to speak, she remained as 
fixed as a statue. 

" i Baruina ! Golubtchika ! ' [mistress, dar- 
ling], said the nurse, coming up to Anna, and 
kissing her hands and her shoulders. 'God 
sent this joy for our birthday celebration ! You 
are not changed at all.' 

" ' AcJi ! nurse \_nyanya\ my dear : I did not 
know that you were in the house/ said Anna, 
coming to herself. 

" ' I don't live here ; I live with my daughter. 
I came to give my best wishes to Serozha, 
Anna Arkadyevna, golubtchika' 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 319 

" The nurse suddenly began to weep, and to 
kiss Anna's hand. 

" Serozha, with bright, joyful eyes, and hold- 
ing his mother with one hand and his nurse 
with the other, was dancing in his little bare 
feet on the carpet. His old nurse's tenderness 
towards his mother was delightful to him. 

" ' Mamma, she often comes to see me ; and 
when she comes ' — he began ; but he stopped 
short when he perceived that the nurse whis- 
pered something in his mother's ear, and that 
his mother's face assumed an expression of fear, 
and at the same time of shame. 

" Anna went to him. 

" ' My precious ! ' she said. 

" She could not say the word ' farewell ' 
\proshchai\ ; but the expression of her face said 
it, and he understood. 

" ' My precious, precious Kutik ! ' she said, 
calling him by a pet name which she used when 
he was a baby. ' You will not forget me ; you ' 
— but she could not say another word. 

" Only then she began to remember the words 
which she wanted to say to him, but now it was 
impossible to say them. Serozha, however, 



320 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

understood all that she would have said : he 
understood that she was unhappy, and that she 
loved him. He even understood what the nurse 
whispered in her ear : he heard the words * al- 
ways at nine o'clock ; ' and he knew that they 
referred to his father, and that his mother must 
not meet him. He understood this, but one 
thing he could not understand : why did her 
face express fear and shame ? . . . She was not 
to blame, but she was afraid of him, and seemed 
ashamed of something. He wanted to ask a 
question which would have explained this cir- 
cumstance, but he did not dare : he saw that 
she was in sorrow, and he pitied her. He 
silently clung close to her, and then he whis- 
pered, ' Don't go yet ! He will not come yet 
awhile.' 

" His mother pushed him away from her a 
little, in order to see if he understood the mean- 
ing of what he had said ; and in the frightened 
expression of his face she perceived that he not 
only spoke of his father, but seemed to ask her 
how he ought to think about him. 

" ' Serozha, my dear,' she said, 'love him ; he 
is better than I am ; and I have been wicked 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 21 

to him. When you have grown up, you will 
understand/ 

" 'No one is better than you/ cried the child, 
with sobs of despair ; and, clinging to his moth- 
er's shoulders, he squeezed her with all the 
force of his little trembling arms. 

" ■ DiisJienka, my darling ! ' stammered Anna; 
and, bursting into tears, she sobbed like a child, 
even as he sobbed. 

" At this moment the door opened, and Vasili 
Lukitch came in. Steps were heard at the 
other door ; and, in a frightened whisper, he 
exclaimed, ' He is coming/ and gave Anna her 
hat. 

"Serozha threw himself on the bed, sobbing, 
and covered his face with his hands. Anna 
took them away to kiss yet once again his tear- 
stained cheeks, and then with quick steps hur- 
ried from the room. Aleksei Aleksandrovitch 
met her at the door. When he saw her, he 
stopped and bowed his head. 

" Though she had declared a moment before 
that he was better than she, the swift glance 
that she gave him, taking in his whole person, 
awoke in her only a feeling of hatred and scorn 



322 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

for him, and jealousy on account of her son. 
She hurriedly lowered her veil, and, quickening 
her step, almost ran from the room. She had 
entirely forgotten in her haste the playthings 
which, on the evening before, she had bought 
with so much love and sadness ; and she took 
them back with her to the hotel. " 

In such scenes, in such moral analyses, as 
these, it is necessary to look for the meaning 
and the drift of "Anna Karenina." There is 
also in the conduct of the husband, the states- 
man, Aleksei Karenin, a constant lesson and 
significance which it would be easy to verify 
with " My Religion " in hand. He is punished 
for having sacrificed every thing to his ambi- 
tion, even the love and the care of her whom 
he took to be his wife. He does not fight a 
duel with Vronsky because he lacks courage, 
but, above all, because religion lays it upon him 
as a duty not to strive to kill his neighbor. 
He hates his guilty wife, even to the point of 
wishing for her death, and of feeling disappoint- 
ment when he finds her alive after the travail 
which she dreaded so keenly ; but his heart 
softens at her delirium, at the words of repent- 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 2 3 

ance which she speaks at the moment which 
she thinks is her last : he forgives her. From 
the day when he has tasted the divine sweet- 
ness of mercy, he is another man : he has 
found the meaning of life. Henceforth he will 
apply the doctrine of Jesus : "'I offer my 'other 
cheek to the smiter; I give my last cloak to 
him who has robbed me ; I ask only one thing 
of God, that he will not take from me the joy 
of forgiving/ . . . Karenin rose: sobs choked 
his voice. Vronsky rose too, and standing with 
bowed head and humble attitude, looked up at 
Karenin without a word to say. He was 
incapable of understanding Aleksei Aleksan- 
drovitch's feelings ; but he felt that such mag- 
nanimity was above him, and irreconcilable 
with his conception of life." 



3^4 LYOF TOLSTOI. 



V. 

The astonishment felt by Vronsky at hearing 
Karenin's words, we also have some right to 
feel in reading Tolstoi's work entitled " My 
Religion." This work is a socialistic and com- 
munistic interpretation of the gospel. The 
censorship has put an end to the publication 
and sale of it ; but it cannot prevent the manu- 
script from passing from hand to hand ; and, 
when it shall have succeeded in destroying it, 
it will be forever unable to suppress the state 
of mind of which this work is only a manifesta- 
tion, and which will possibly be before long the 
state of mind of a whole people. 

It is possible now, if it ever was, by looking 
towards Russia, to find in the spectacle of the 
moral phenomena there going on an answer to 
the question, " How are dogmas born ? " 

It was remarked long ago that all the great 
convulsions of a nation are followed by an 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 2 5 

increased tendency towards mysticism : this is 
manifested in Russia more than elsewhere. 
For example, after the invasion in 1812, a sort 
of sectarian eruption followed the patriotic 
fever. The muzhik had bravely burned his 
harvest, and had taken arms to drive out the 
foreigner. He had done a man's work, and had 
been given to understand, that, as soon as the 
enemy were out of the way, the grateful country 
would recognize him as a son and give him his 
freedom. The French, burned out by fire, cut 
down by frost, 1 retire, sowing the path of their 
journey back with corpses. But the hour of 
liberty does not yet strike. The affairs of 
Europe must be put in order before taking hold 
of the muzhik's. After the treaties have been 
signed, after the armies have gone home, the 
rights of the muzhik remain "neglected, and his 
complaints are stifled. His despair is seen in 
emigrations, in deeds of violence, in his affilia- 
tion with existing sects, in the formation of 
a new social and religious dogma. At that 

x The Russians, after the retreat of the French, conferred the 
epaulets on Jack Frost : it was said that General Morozof won the 
victory for them. — N. H. D. 



3^6 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

moment we see arise for the first time the 
bogomol, or praying men. 

In the last quarter of the century, Russia 
has experienced a storm more tremendous than 
that of the invasion of 1812: it might be said 
that the face of the country was transformed 
by the upheaval in the condition of the people. 

The single reign of Alexander II. saw such 
facts accomplished as the abolition of serfdom ; 
the redivision of the land ; above all, the in- 
crease in the taxes, which has touched the peo- 
ple in a very different way from all the reforms. 
The dominating influence of wealth has grown 
more and more ; a great net-work of railroads 
has extended over the country; the maxim 
of laissez faire and laissez passer has made 
its way into the Russian village. None of 
these changes has fully succeeded, or, in better 
words, none has succeeded as yet. In periods 
of transition, it is the feature of inconvenience 
that, above all, attracts attention, and more 
often than not causes the advantageous to be 
overlooked. Now, here, the ill has often sur- 
passed the good. Thus in the regulation of 
landed property, the insufficiency of the lots 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 2 7 

of land granted the muzhik, and the lack of pro- 
portion between the revenue and the tax im- 
posed, have quickly brought the small cultivator 
back into dependence upon the great proprie- 
tor, and serfage has re-appeared in disguise. 1 

As to the administrative reforms, the zentstvo, 
the tribunal, the school, all this has scarcely 
made any impression upon the people except 
as bringing an increase in the tax, expressed 
by the immemorial formula so much per soul. 
The taxes coming in much less than the in- 
crease in the rates, extreme measures have 
to be taken to obtain the payment of them. 
The muzhik has only one way of escaping 
prosecution, and that is to give himself over, 
body and soul, to the usurer. In short space 
of time the misery is universal. A single man 
gets rich at the expense of all the others : it is 
the kulak (the fist), the monopolist. 

Bread is lacking in many places. In its 
place they eat, not cake, but preparations of 
straw, bark, or grass, all that which is called by 
the expressive term cheat-hunger? It is plain 

1 The word podsporye might be rendered by the much less expres- 
sive periphrasis "the succedanea of bread." — Author's note. 



3^8 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

to see that the muzhiks, reduced to these ex- 
tremities, lose their interest in a society which 
treats them a little less kindly than if they 
were common cattle. All that they know of 
public affairs is that it is necessary to pay 
the tax. The most palpable advantage which 
they get from the time spent in discussing the 
common interests is the bumper of vodka with 
which discussions are kept alive : thus they for- 
get themselves for a few hours. 

Then, in hatred of the present, minds turn 
back to the past, and, above all, yearn eagerly 
for the future. The peasant's naive imagina- 
tion is consoled by his dreams ; the ardor of 
his desires is spent in Utopias. The idea of 
free lands haunts these enthusiastic minds. 
The story is secretly whispered about of the 
promises made by the Shah of Persia to emi- 
grants who will come and settle in his domin- 
ions : his subjects shall pay no taxes and have 
no superiors. Solid masses of people set out 
suddenly, and depart for "the country of the 
white waters." There it is that the popular 
ideal is to be realized. Many outlaw them- 
selves without leaving their residences, and re- 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 3 2 9 

fuse to answer any of their obligations towards 
the commune or the mir. Others take refuge 
in the neighboring forest, go and settle in the 
desert, in the steppe. A considerable number 
go on pilgrimages to the holy places. Finally, 
there are those who go to swell the class of 
true Nihilists ; that is to say, people who make 
their lives even a bold negation of all that is 
accepted, affirmed, around them, — the class of 
wanderers, or that of occults. 

The attitude of these refractory men and 
women strikes the people, and is not slow to 
inspire them with a respect which is thus 
explained. The Russian people's heads are 
stuffed with legends. One of the widest spread 
is that of the centenarian who lives in the 
desert, taking no other food than a consecrated 
wafer once a week ; and, though he has not the 
slightest notion of the alphabet, yet he reads 
the Holy Book, the book with the leaves of gold, 
where is found the answer to every question, 
the rule for all conduct. We see now how 
reality and legend can come to be confounded. 
In the lonely hut where this hermit dw T ells 
apart, fitted as he is ordinarily by his intelli- 



33° LYOF TOLSTOI. 

gence and his will for the exceptional part 
which he is going to perform, he allows him- 
self endlessly to reflect on all sorts of subjects. 
He ruminates at his leisure, in the solitude, 
over all the difficulties of the life from which 
he has torn himself away. He gropes after his 
definition of things good and of things evil ; he 
slowly builds up his solemn casuistry. 

The peasants one after another take the road 
to his hermitage. They are sure of bringing 
away good advice about disputed cases. Their 
cases include every subject, — family affairs, 
commune affairs, church affairs. Every thing 
is discussed, exposed to the cenobite's criticism, 
to his interpretation. It is a matter of course 
that religious questions fill a large part in this 
programme, worked up by the anxieties of the 
throng, and the prophetic explanations of the 
hermit. But the programme also takes up eco- 
nomic or social questions. It prepares for the 
coming of a new law. This law is the outcome 
of a duty, and this duty is summed up in the 
formula, "To live according to justice ;" or, 
in other words, "according to the will of God." 

The schisms formed, as we have just seen, are 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 33 l 

those of unimportant people. They have noth- 
ing in common with those which the irksome- 
ness of living develops, in similar lines, in 
Russia, among the upper classes of the nation. 
Quite contrary to the sects born in the aristoc- 
racy, the schisms among the common people j 
take their rise in the need of existence. They; 
serve the instinct which impels the creature to 
seek not only life, but the best form of life. 
That is why they act so powerfully on the 
masses ; that is why they cross time and space, 
making proselytes, apostles, martyrs. 

The surprising thing is that the rich and 
aristocratic Count Tolstoi' should become the 
apostle of such a religion. Like the sectaries 
of the rustic class, he builds a complete reli- 
gious, political, and social system upon a new 
interpretation of the Gospels. 

His religion, properly speaking, takes as its 
foundation the maxim of the Evangelist, "Re- 
sist not the one that is evil." And it is not in 
an allegorical sense, it is by the letter, that 
these words of Jesus must be understood. The 
law laid down by Jesus' disciples is precisely 
the opposite of that of the disciples of this 



9 






33 2 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

world, which is the law of conflict. This doc- 
trine of Jesus, which is sure to give peace to 
the world, is contained wholly in five command- 
ments : — 

i. Be at peace with everybody. Do not 
allow yourself to consider any one as low or 
stupid. 

2. Do not violate the rights of wedlock. Do 
not commit adultery. 

3. The oath impels men to sin. Know that 
it is wrong, and bind not yourselves by any 
promise. 

4. Human vengeance or justice is an evil. 
Do not, under any pretext, practise it. Bear 
with insults, and render not evil for evil. 

5. Know that all men are brothers, the sons 
of one father. Do not break the peace with 
any on account of difference of nationality. 

By putting this doctrine into practice, man can 
realize a happiness in life, and there is no hap- 
piness in life except in this path. There is no 
immortality. The conception of the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, according to Tolstoi', is the 
greatest piece of barbarism. 

The political doctrine derived from this reli- 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 333 

gious doctrine admits of no tribunals or armies 
or national frontiers. 

The social doctrine to which we must be led 
by this religious and political dogma is the sup- 
pression of property, and the proclamation of 
communism. Man is not put into the world 
that others should work for him, but that he 
himself should work for others. He alone who 
works shall have daily bread. 

The most dangerous enemy of society is the 
Church, because it supports with all its power 
the errors which it has read into its interpreta- 
tion of Jesus' doctrine. In place of this false 
light of Church dogma, which misleads believers 
and lets them "go into the pit," must be sub- 
stituted the light of conscience ; one's whole 
conduct must be irradiated by it, by submitting 
each of his acts to the approbation of the judge 
which we feel within us, "in our inner tribunal." 

To succeed in leading the life which con- 
science may approve, what is, above all, neces- 
sary ? " Do not lead a life which makes it so 
difficult to refrain from wrath, from not com- 
mitting adultery, from not taking oaths, from 
not defending yourself by violence, from not 



334 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

carrying on war : lead a life which would make 
all that difficult to do." Do not crush at pleas- 
ure the very conditions of earthly happiness; 
do not break the bond which unites man to 
nature : that is to say, lead lives so as to 
enjoy "the sky, the sun, the pure air, the earth 
covered with vegetation and peopled with ani- 
mals;" become a rustic instead of being the 
busy, weary, sickly urban. Return to the 
natural law of labor, — of labor freely chosen 
and accomplished with pleasure, of physical 
labor, the source of appetite and sleep. Have 
a family, but have the joys of it as well as the 
cares : that is, keep your children near you ; 
do not intrust their education to strangers ; do 
not imprison them ; do not drive them " into 
physical, moral, and intellectual corruption." 
Have free and affectionate intercourse with 
all men, whatever their rank, their nationality. 
" The peasant and wife are free to enter into 
brotherly relations with eighty millions of work- 
ing-men, from Arkhangel to Astrakhan, without 
waiting for ceremony or introduction. A clerk 
and his wife find hundreds of people who are 
their equals ; but the clerks of higher station 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 335 

do not recognize them as their equals, and they 
in their turn exclude their inferiors. A wealthy 
man of society and his wife have only a few 
score families of equal distinction, all the others 
are unknown to them. The cabinet minister 
and the millionnaire have only a dozen people 
as rich and as important as they are. For 
emperors and kings, the circle is still narrower. 
Is it not like a prison, where each prisoner in 
his cell has relations only with one or two 
jailers?" Finally, live in a community, in 
hygienic conditions, with moral habits, which 
bring you the nearest possible to that ideal 
which is the very foundation of happiness, 
health as long as you live, death without 
disease, when existence has reached its limit. 

The higher one rises in the social scale, the / ^ f* 
farther one departs from this ideal. The picture J 
which Tolstoi' paints of the physical pains and tor- 
tures of the wealthy and of the aristocratic, of 
those whom he calls "the martyrs of the religion 
of the world," is remarkably vigorous. Rous- — 
seau's declamation against the pretended benefits 
of civilization here finds a powerful interpreter. 

Does that mean that Tolstoi declaims ? No 



33 6 LYOF TOLSTOI. 

one is more in earnest. It is not only in words 
that he declares war on the organization of 
society recognized and defended by the govern- 
ment of his country. He puts the doctrine 
into practice ; he is ready to suffer all things to 
affirm the cause of Jesus. His refusal to take 
an oath, which is one of the articles of his 
creed, has already brought upon him a condem- 
nation from one of those tribunals which he 
himself condemns in the name of the maxim of 
the Gospels, " Judge not." It is not credible 
that the old hero of the wars of the Caucasus 
and Crimea compels his son to refuse military 
service, as was done once by the son of 
SutaTef, the raskolnik of Tver. He would 
have liked to strip himself of his property, in 
order to conform to the socialistic dogma for- 
bidding inheritance and property. He was 
hindered only by the fear of trampling upon 
the liberty and the conscience of others. But 
amid the luxury of his family Count Tolstoi' 
lives the life of a poor man. He has dropped 
his pen as a novelist. 1 Clad like a muzhik > he 

1 At last accounts, the reports about Count Tolstoi's vagaries 
were found to be idle exaggerations : he is living on his estate, like a 
reasonable man, studying Greek and Hebrew, and writing short 
stories. — N. II. D. 



LYOF TOLSTOI. 337 

wields the scythe or drives the plough ; between 
seedtime and harvest, he preaches his evangel. 

I do not wish either to spread or to confute 
his teaching : for me it is sufficient to have 
given the reader an idea of it. Let him not 
show the characteristic behavior of a French 
reader ; let him not hasten to see in Count 
Tolstoi's latest attitude a sign of aberration. 
This attitude in his country is shared by a mul- " 
titude of men. The single religious sect of 
SJialapuhti (Extravagants), preaching and prac- 
tising a communistic gospel like Tolstoi, has, 
within a score of years, won over all the com- 
mon people, all the rustic class, of the south 
and south-west of Russia. Judicious observers, 
well-informed economists, foresee the complete 
and immedate spread of the doctrine in the 
lower classes throughout the empire. 1 The 
day when the work of propagation shall be 
finished, the raskolniks of a special, socialistic 
dogma will be counted : their number will 

1 In 1SS2 a Russian writer, Mr. Abramof, published, in The 
Annals of the Country, a very curious study of the Shalafutui. 
Turgenief was grea tly str uck byj t^ He said in regard to it : " There 
is the peasant getting up steam ; before long he will make a general 
up-turning." — Author's Note. 



33^ LYOF TOLSTOI. 

suffice to show their power. That day, if they 
take it into their heads to act, will only have — 
using the popular expression — "to blow " on 
the old order of things, to see it vanish away. 



APPENDIX. 



As M. Dupuy does not pretend to give any- 
thing more than a hasty resume of biographical 
facts, the reader may like to have for reference 
a more definite and fuller account of the lives 
of the three great authors whose literary work 
has been analyzed. The main authority which 
I have consulted has been P. Polevoi's "History 
of Russian Literature, in Sketches and Biog- 
raphies" \Istoriya Russkoi Literaturui f Otcher-- 
kakh i Biografyakh, fourth edition, published in 
1883.] Some of his dates differ slightly from 
those commonly accepted. How far a man's 
judgment is to be accepted who writes with the 
fear of the censor in his eyes, is a question; but 
there are a few quotations in Polevoi' which are 
surprising in their liberality. The work is a 
valuable compound of literary fact and criti- 
cism, and it is illustrated with capital woodcuts. 

Nikola* Vasilyevitch Gogol- Yanovsky was 

339 



340 APPENDIX. 

born on the 31st of March, 1809 (N.S.), in the 
little town of Sorotchintsui, in the Government 
of Poltava. His father, Vasili Afanasyevitch 
Gogol, was the son of a regimental clerk : at the 
time when the Zaporog Cossacks were still in 
existence, this position was considered highly 
respectable. Only two generations separated 
Gogol from the time of the Cossack wars ; and 
his grandfather, the regimental clerk, used to 
relate to his family a great many stories of that 
time. Gogol was surrounded from his earliest 
childhood by a life that was hardly freed from 
its mediaeval, warlike, half-wild character. It 
was full of fresh recollections of the olden 
times, of legends and war-songs ; it was a life 
in which religious fervor was intermingled with 
a swarm of popular prejudices. Gogol's grand- 
father was a lively representative of the just 
vanishing past, and not in vain does Gogol 
speak about him often in his VetcJiera na Klnt- 
torye (Evenings at the Farm). Gogol was in- 
debted to his grandfather for at least half of his 
Malo-Russian tales. " My grandfather," he says, 
in his sketch in his Vctcher Nakanunya Ivdna 
Kupdla ("The Eve of Ivan Kupalo's Day"). 



APPENDIX. 34 1 

" My grandfather (may he prosper in heaven ! 
may he eat in the other world little wheaten 
rolls, with poppy seeds and honey ! ) was able 
to tell stories in a wonderful way. When he 
told stories, I would sit the whole day without 
moving from my place, and never cease to lis- 
ten. ... It was not so much the marvellous 
tales of the olden time, about the invasions of 
the Zaporozhtsui (Cossacks) and the Poles, about 
the brave deeds of the old heroes (Polkova, 
Poltor-Kozhukh, and Sagaidatchnui), that inter- 
ested us, as the legends about some olden deed, 
which used to make the shudders run down my 
back, and my hair stand on end. Sometimes 
my fear would be so great from them, that 
every thing would appear to me like God knows 
what monsters." 

While his grandfather was a representative 
of the vanishing past, his father, Vasili Afanas- 
yevitch, appeared as the representative of mod- 
ern times. He was a well-read man and full of 
experience, was fond of literature, subscribed to 
magazines, and at the same time was endowed 
with a gift of relating stories, and of enhancing 
them with Malo-Russian humor. His farm, 



34 2 APPENDIX. 

Vasilyevka, was the centre of society for the 
district. Among the varied festivals in this 
farm, Gogol's father used often to get up pri- 
vate theatricals. At these spectacles they used 
to give Kotlyarevsky's just published comedy 
Natalka Poltavka (" The Girl from Poltava"), 
and Moskal Tcharivnik (" The Charming Mus- 
covite"). Thus Gogol was early attracted to 
the stasre. 

Gogol's father wrote, in imitation of Kotlyar- 
evsky, several comedies which were played at 
Vasilyevka. Gogol was taught to read at home 
by a hired seminarist. Afterwards he was taken, 
with his younger brother Ivan, to Poltava, where 
he was taught by one of the teachers of the 
gymnasium. While the children were at home 
on their vacation, Ivan died; and Gogol was not 
sent back to Poltava, but remained for some 
time at home. Meantime, the governor of 
Thernigof, the prokuror (attorney-general) Ba- 
zhanof, informed Gogol's father about the open- 
ing at Niezhin, of a gymnasium for higher 
learning, founded by Prince Bezborodko, and 
advised him to place his son in the boarding- 
school connected with the gymnasium. This 



APPENDIX. 343 

was done in May, 1821. Gogol entered as a 
paying pupil, and at the end of a year he re- 
ceived the government scholarship. It cannot 
be said that Gogol was much indebted to this 
gymnasium of the higher education, or that 
he gained there any solid knowledge of any 
kind whatsoever, even in the very elementary 
branches. He studied his lessons very super- 
ficially ; but as he had a good memory he got 
a smattering of the lectures, and, by studying 
hard just before the examinations, he was pro- 
moted in due time. He especially disliked 
mathematics, and he had a very slight incli- 
nation even for the study of languages. After 
graduation he could not read a French book 
without a dictionary. Against German and 
English he had a curious spite. He used to 
say, in jest, that he did not believe that Schiller 
or Goethe knew German; "surely they must 
have written in some other language.'' 

The slight progress made by Gogol in the 
modern languages was more than rivalled by 
his backwardness in the classic tongues. " He 
studied with me three years," says Kulzhinsky, 
Gogol's Latin teacher at the Niezhin gymna- 



344 APPENDIX. 

sium, in his "Reminiscences," "and he could 
not learn any thing except the translation of 
the first sentence of the " Chrestomathie " by 
means of Koshansky's grammar, 'Universus 
mundus plerumque distribuitur in duas partes, 
coelum et terrain ' (for which he was nicknamed 
universus mtmdus). During the lectures, Gogol 
used to hide some book or other under his desk, 
paying heed neither to coelum nor terrain. I 
must confess that neither under me nor under 
my colleagues did he learn any thing. The 
school taught him only some logical formality 
and directness of understanding and thought; 
and, more than that, he learned nothing with us." 
Not even the Russian language was accu- 
rately learned by Gogol in the gymnasium of 
the higher sciences, according to the testimony 
of his biographer. " His school letters," says 
he, "can be distinguished by the absence of all 
rules of orthography. To make them plainer, 
I used to arrange the punctuation-marks as it 
was necessary ; I used to change the capital 
letters, of which he was very extravagant ; arud 
I often corrected his blunders in the endings 
of adjectives." 



APPENDIX. 345 

The only thing that Gogol acquired in the 
gymnasium was the art of drawing, and his 
letters to his relatives prove that he took great 
pleasure in spending much time in this art. 

As he was towards the bottom of his class in 
his studies, he was at the same time greatly 
distinguished by his love of mischief ; and he 
was a great favorite with every one. His com- 
rades were especially drawn to him by his inex- 
haustible humor. Even in childhood could be 
seen in him his spontaneous wit ; and at the 
same time, no one could copy or imitate a 
character as well as the little Gogol. 

He was an indefatigable reader. He espe- 
cially liked Pushkin and Zhukovsky. His par- 
ents subscribed to the Vyestnik Yevropui 
("Messenger of Europe"), and the reading of 
this and the almanacs aroused in him a desire 
to write. At first this came in the form of 
parodies. While he was at Niezhin, a certain 
scholar showed some signs of poetical passion ; 
and Gogol collected this fellow's verses, and 
put them in the form of an almanac, which he 
called Pamassky Navoz (" Manure from Parnas- 
sus "). These parodies suggested to him to 



346 APPENDIX. 

publish a serious written journal, and his enter- 
prise cost him great trouble. He had to write 
articles on all subjects, and then copy them, 
and, what was more important, to make a vol- 
ume out of them. He spent whole nights try- 
ing to decide upon his titlepage, on which was 
ornamented the name of his journal "The Star" 
(Zvyezdd). It was all done stealthily, without 
the knowledge of his friends. Early in the 
month, the journal made its first appearance. 
In "The Star" were published Gogol's story, 
"The Tverdislavitch Brothers," which was an 
imitation of contemporary fiction, and some of 
his poems. In Gogol's lofty style, which he 
now affected, he also wrote a tragedy, "The 
Murderers" (Razboiniki) and a ballad, "Two 
Little Fish " (Dve Ruibki) y touching on the 
death of his brother. He also wrote at this 
time " Hans Kiichel-Garten," a rhymed idyl, 
which tells how an ideal young man leaves his 
sweetheart through his thirst for grandeur, but, 
after vain wandering, returns again to his home, 
and shares with his love happiness under a straw 
thatch. Gogol's comic talent, however, in spite 
of his belief in a lofty style, began to find means 



APPENDIX. 347 

of expression. Thus, among other things, he 
wrote a satire on the inhabitants of the town 
of Niezhin, under the title " Something about 
Niezhin ; or, no Law for Fools," in which he 
depicts the typical people of the town. It was 
divided into five parts, — " The Dedication of 
the Church in the Greek Cemetery," " The 
Election to the Greek Magistracy," " Swallow- 
ing-all Fair," " The Dinner to the Predvoditel 
of the Nobility," and "The Coming and Going of 
the Students." 

On returning once to the gymnasium after 
his vacation, Gogol wrote a comedy in Malo- 
Russian, which was played in his father's thea- 
tre ; and thus he made his debut as a director 
and actor. 

Blackboards served as scenes, and the insuffi- 
ciency of costumes was made up by imagination. 
Then the schoolboys clubbed together, and got 
scenery and costumes, copying what Gogol had 
seen in his father's theatre, the only one that he 
had ever attended. The direction of the gymna- 
sium, wishing to encourage the study of French, 
introduced pieces in that tongue ; and the re- 
pertory of the little school theatre soon was 



34-8 APPENDIX. 

composed of comedies by Moliere, Florian, Von 
Vizin, Kotzebue, Kniaznin, and Malo-Russian 
authors. The townspeople heard about the 
theatre, and it soon became very popular ; and 
a few years ago people were still living in 
Niezhin who could remember how successfully 
Gogol took the role of old women. 

Towards the end of his course, Gogol and his 
comrades subscribed quite a sum of money, and 
bought a library, which contained the works of 
Delvig, Pushkin, Zhukovsky, and other distin- 
guished contemporaries, and subscribed to sev- 
eral journals. Gogol was made librarian. He 
was so indefatigable that he made every person 
who took a book finish it, and so careful of their 
cleanliness that he used to wrap up the fingers 
of his readers in paper. 

Gogol graduated in 1828, with the rank of the 
fourteenth tchin. Even at this time he was very 
religious, as can be seen in his correspondence 
with his relatives. " After the death of his 
father, in 1825, he writes to his mother, 'Don't 
be worried, my clearest mdmcuka. I have borne 
this shock with the strength of a Christian. It 
is true, at first I was overwhelmed with this 



APPENDIX. 349 

terrible tidings. However, I did not let any- 
body see that I was so sorrowful ; but, in my 
own room, I was given over mightily to unrea- 
sonable despair. I even wanted to take my life. 
But God kept me from it. And towards even- 
ing, I noticed only sorrow, but not a passionate 
sorrow; and it gradually turned into an uneasy, 
hardly noticeable melancholy, mingled with a 
feeling of gratitude to Almighty God. I bless 
thee, holy faith ! In thee only I find a source 
of consolation and compensation for my bitter 
grief."' 

At the same time he was a fiery enthusiast ; 
he imagined himself a great benefactor of his 
fatherland. For this reason he felt inclined to 
a governmental situation. He wrote his mother 
in 1828 that he was not understood: some, he 
said, took him to be a genius ; others, to be a 
stupid. He tried to be one of the romanti- 
cists ; and, like all of those budding geniuses, 
he thought that he had a great deal to put up 
with from people. In the same letter he writes 
his mother how much ungratefulness, coldness, 
vexation, he had been obliged to bear without 
complaint and without grumbling. He writes 



35° APPENDIX. 

one of his friends that the people of Niezhin, 
not excepting "our dear instructors/' have 
heaped upon our genius the pressing heaps of 
their earthiness, and crushed us." Two features 
of Gogol's life at this time are interesting as 
showing his development, — a tendency to as- 
ceticism, which led him to a stern self-restraint, 
turning all the pleasures and interests of his 
life to a spiritual and intellectual sphere. "My 
plan of my life," he writes to his mother in 
1829, " is wonderfully stern and exact. Every 
kopek has its place. I refuse myself even very 
extreme necessities, with a view of being able 
to keep myself in the position which I am now, 
so that I can satisfy my desire of seeing and 
feeling the beautiful (prekrdsnoe). With this 
view I lay up all my annual allowance, except 
what is absolutely necessary." 

In 1829 Gogol first went to Petersburg, where, 
in spite of his vivid dreams of success and glory, 
he found the hard realities of life, and met with 
discouraging failures. He wrote his mother: 
" Everywhere I met with disappointments ; and, 
what is strangest of all, I met them when I least 
expected them. Men entirely incapable, with- 



APPENDIX. 35 x 

out any letters of introduction whatever, easily 
succeeded where I, even with the aid of my 
patrons, failed." He also fell in love with a 
girl of high rank ; and in his letter to his moth- 
er he speaks about it, but does not mention her 
name : " For God's sake, don't ask her name. 
She is very, very high. . . . No, it is not love : I, 
at least, -never heard of such a love. Under the 
impulse of madness and horrible torments of 
the soul, I was thirsty to intoxicate myself only 
with the sight of her, only the sight of her I 
looked for. To look upon her once more was 
my only desire, which grew stronger with an 
unspeakable, gnawing anguish. I looked upon 
myself with horror, and I saw all my horrible 
situation. Every thing in the world was strange 
to me, life and death were equally intolerable, 
and my soul could not account for its impulses." 
His mental state arising from all these dis- 
appointments became so serious that he went 
abroad with money that his mother sent him to 
pay a mortgage on their estate, and told his 
mother to take his portion of the estate in ex- 
change for it. He went to Liibeck by sea, staid 
there a month, took a few baths, and returned 



35 2 APPENDIX. 

to Petersburg without seeing any thing more of 
Europe. At all events, he returned, sobered, 
refreshed, and strengthened, in September, 1829. 
In April, 1830, Gogol found a very insignifi- 
cant place in the ministry of Appanages. The 
whole outcome of this year of servitude was 
the knowledge of tying up papers, and a vivid 
memory of various types of Tchiiiovniks which 
he used to advantage in his works later on. 

In 1829 he wrote his poem "Italy," and sent 
it anonymously to the publisher of Stun Otet- 
chestva (Son of the Fatherland.) Soon after- 
wards he published " Hans Kiichel - Garten," 
which had been written while he was in the 
gymnasium. It was signed A /of, and brought a 
review full of unmerciful ridicule. This review 
cut Gogol so keenly that he immediately with- 
drew the story from circulation. Buying up all 
the copies that he could get hold of, he hired a 
room in a hotel, and made a grand holocaust of 
them. The last tendencies of his immature, imi- 
tative romanticism went up with the incense of 
the fire and smoke. He soon saw that a new 
spirit was invading Russian literature: histori- 
cal novels were becoming fashionable. So Gogol 



APPENDIX. 353 

writes to all his friends and relatives in Malo 
Russia to send him every possible scrap about 
the history of that region, about the habits, 
manners, customs, legends, games, songs, of the 
Cossacks. " It is very, very necessary for me," 
he would add. He was working over his "Even- 
ings on the Farm near Dikanka." In February, 

1830, there appeared anonymously in the Otet- 
chestvennuie Zapiski one of Gogol's tales, enti- 
tled " Bassavriuk; or, Ivan Kupala's Eve." In 

1 83 1, in " Northern Flowers," appeared a chap- 
ter of his historical novel " Hetman," signed 
with four zeros. In the first number of the 
"Literary Gazette" he published a sketch from 
his Malo-Russian story, Strashnui Kaban (The 
Terrible Boar). He also wrote serious articles 
and translations. 

In March, 1831, he was made teacher of Rus- 
sian in the Patriotic Institute. Here, instead of 
teaching Russian, he taught history, geography, 
and international history ; and when he was 
called to account for his vagaries, and was asked 
when he was going to teach the Russian lan- 
guage, he smiled, and said, " What do you want 
it for, gentlemen ? The main thing in Russian 



354 APPEXDIX. 

is to know the difference between ye and yat 
[two similarly sounding, but differently written, 
letters], and that I perceive you know already, 
as is seen by your copy-books. No one can 
teach you to write smoothly and gracefully. 
This power is granted by nature, but not by 
instruction." 

Indeed, Gogol himself, to his dying day, was 
not able to spell correctly. He cared more for 
the spirit than the form. The publication of 
"Evenings on the Farm," especially the sec- 
ond series, which are marked by the purest 
humor, without a shade of melancholy, imme- 
diately placed him in the front rank of the 
authors of his day; and this was the happi- 
est epoch of his life. Soon afterwards he be- 
gan to feel a re-action. In 1833 he wrote to 
Pogodin : " Let my stories be doomed to obliv- 
ion till something really solid, great, artistic, 
shall come out of me. But I stand idle, motion- 
less. I don't want to do any thing trivial, and 
I can't think of any thing great." He then 
betook himself to historical investigation, and 
determined to write the history of Malo-Russia 
and of the Middle Ages. He laid out the 



APPENDIX. 355 

work on a colossal scale. He wrote to Mak- 
si'mof, " I am writing the history of the Middle 
Ages, and I think it will fill eight volumes, if 
not nine. ,, He never finished these histories, 
but his study of Malo-Russia led him to the 
composition of his great epos "Taras Bulba." 

There happened to be a vacancy in the uni- 
versity of St. Vladimer in Kief. Some one 
suggested Gogol, and he was invited to apply. 
He came, he saw, and he conquered the man in 
whose hands the appointment lay, by his won- 
derful flow of brilliant conversation ; but he 
brought no documents. He was requested to 
come again, with his documents and application. 
Again he appeared, and again he dazzled by his 
wit; but when he was asked for his documents 
he pulled from his inside pocket his certificate 
of graduation from the gymnasium, which gave 
him the right to a tchin of the fourteenth class, 
and an application for the chair of Ordinary 
Professor. He was told that it was impossible, 
with such credentials, for him to be given any 
thing more than the chair of adjunct. Gogol was 
obstinate, and absolutely refused to take that 
position. Shortly after, he was appointed pro- 



35 6 APPENDIX. 

fessor at Petersburg, where he gave the one lec- 
ture which was so beautiful. " We awaited the 
next lecture with impatience," says Ivanitsky, 
who was a pupil at that time ; " Gogol came in 
very late, and began with the phrase : ' Asia 
was a volcano belching forth people/ Then 
he spoke a few words about the emigration of 
nations ; but it was so dull, lifeless, and desul- 
tory that it was tedious to listen to him, and we 
could not believe that it was the same Gogol 
who had spoken so beautifully the week before. 
Finally he mentioned a few books where we 
could read up the subject, and bowed and left. 
The whole lecture lasted twenty minutes. The 
following lectures were of the same stamp ; so 
that we became entirely cool to him, and the 
classes became smaller and smaller. But once, 
— it was October, — while walking up and 
down the hall of assembly, and waiting for 
him, suddenly Pushkin and Zhukovsky came 
in. They knew, of course, through the Swiss, 
that Gogol had not yet come ; and so they 
only asked us in which room he would read. 
We showed them the auditorium. Pushkin and 
Zhukovsky looked in, but did not enter. They 



APPENDIX. 357 

waited in the hall of assembly. In quarter of 
an hour the lecturer came ; and we, following 
the three poets, entered the auditorium and sat 
down. Gogol took his chair, and suddenly, 
without any warning, began to read the history 
of the Arabians. The lecture was brilliant, 
exactly in the manner of the first. Word for 
word it was published in the 'Arabesques/ 
It was evident that he knew beforehand the 
intention of the poets to come to his lecture, 
and therefore he prepared himself to treat 
them like poets. After the lecture Pushkin 
said something to Gogol, but the only word I 
heard was 'fascinating' (iivlekdtelno). The 
rest of his lectures were very dry and tedious. 
Not one historical personage caused any lively 
and enthusiastic discussion. . . . He looked 
upon the dead nations of the past with dreary 
eyes, as it were ; and it was doubtless true 
that it was tedious to him, and he saw that it 
was tedious to his hearers. He used to come 
and speak half an hour from his platform, and 
then leave for a whole week and sometimes 
for two. Then he would come again and re- 
pcr.t the same proceeding. Thus went the 
time till May." 



35 8 APPENDIX. 

He gave up his thoughts of the nine-volume 
history of the Middle Ages ; and of this year 
of disappointment there remained only a few 
articles in the " Arabesques," and the sketches 
of a tragedy entitled "Alfred," which show 
that he had not a trace of talent for tragedy. 
In 1835 he resigned, and devoted himself 
entirely to literature. 

About this time he began to develop a great 
passion for the supernatural, which is best illus- 
trated in his sketch "Vii." It is an interesting 
fact that the poet Pushkin, whose influence over 
Gogol was considerable, suggested to him the 
subject of "Dead Souls." He also told him 
the story which he afterwards worked up into 
the "Revizor." Pushkin himself at one time 
intended to use both of these subjects. Gogol 
attended the first production of the "Revizor" 
on the stage, and was greatly disgusted. He 
trained the actors, however, giving them the 
meaning of every inflection, and showing what 
gesticulation was needed. "All are against 
me," he wrote to M. S. Shchepkin in 1836, "all 
the decent tchinovniks are shouting that I hold 
nothing sacred, since I dared to speak so about 



APPENDIX. 359 

people who are in the service. The police are 
against me, merchants are against me, literary 
men are against me : they berate me, yet they 
go to see the play. At the fourth act it is im- 
possible to get tickets. Had it not been for 
the mighty protection of the emperor, my play 
would never have been put on the stage ; and 
people even now are doing their best to have it 
suppressed. Now I see what it means to be a 
comic writer. The least spark of truth, and all 
are against you, — not one man, but all classes. 
I imagine what it would have been if I had 
taken something from Petersburg life, with 
which I am even more acquainted than provin- 
cial life. It is very unpleasant for a man to 
see people against him whom he loves with 
brotherly affection." 

Gogol wrote another comedy, entitled "The 
Leaving of the Theatre after the Production of 
a New Comedy." It was founded on the vari- 
ous criticisms of his " Revizor," but it was not 
very successful. In 1836 Gogol went abroad. 
He lived the most of the time in Rome, though 
he wandered all over Europe, and occasionally 
returned for short visits, renewing his acquaint- 



3^0 APPENDIX. 

ance with his old friends. Like Turgenief, 
while he was in Russia he was disgusted with 
the state of affairs, but when he left there his 
soul began to turn with intense yearning for 
his native land. In 1837 Gogol wrote " Dead 
Souls." He said in his " Confessions of an Au- 
thor," " I began to write ' Dead Souls ' with- 
out laying out any circumstantial plan, without 
deciding what the hero should be. I simply 
thought that the bold project, with the fulfil- 
ment of which Tchitchikof was occupied, would 
of itself lead me to various persons and charac- 
ters, that the natural impulse in me to laugh 
would create many scenes which I intended to 
mingle with pathetic ones. But I was stopped 
with questions at every step, why and where- 
fore? What must express such and such a char- 
acter ? What must express such and such a 
phenomenon ? Now I had to ask : What must 
be done when such questions arise? Drive 
them off ? I tried, but the stern question con- 
fronted me. As I felt no special love for this 
character or that, I could not feel any love for 
the work to bring it out. On the contrary, I felt 
something like contempt : every thing seemed 



APPENDIX. 3^1 

strained, forced ; and even that which made me 
laugh became pitiable. " 

Charles Edward Turner, English lector in 
the University of St. Petersburg, says in his 
" Studies in Russian Literature : " " In the year 
1840 Gogol came to Russia for a short period, 
in order to superintend the publication of the 
first volume of the "Dead Souls, ,, and then 
returned to Italy. With the appearance of this 
volume we may date the close of his literary 
career ; for though in 1846, at which period he 
again settled in Russia, he published his "Cor- 
respondence with my Friends," the work can 
only be regarded as the production of a dis- 
ordered and enfeebled intellect. . . . Describ- 
ing his final illness and death in 1852, he says, 
"One of his last acts was to burn the manu- 
script of the concluding portion of 'The Dead 
Souls,' and to write a few sad lines in which 
he prays that all his works may be forgotten 
as the products of a pitiable vanity, composed 
at a time when he was still ignorant of the 
true interests and duties of man." At the 
end of his article on Gogol he says, "What 
ultimately became of Tchitchikof, we do not 



362 APPEXDIX. 

know ; for, as has been already stated, the con- 
cluding portion of his adventures was destroyed 
by Gogol in a fit of religious enthusiasm. A 
certain Dr. Zahartchenko of Kief thought fit 
to publish, in 1857, a continuation of Gogol's 
inimitable work. The stolid complacency which 
alone could encourage an obscure and talent- 
less novelist to undertake such a task is in 
itself a sufficient standard of the success he 
could achieve ; and his book must be regarded 
with the same mingled feeling of astonishment 
and pity an Englishman would experience on 
having put before him a continuation of Thack- 
eray's "Denis Duval" or Dickens's "Mystery 
of Edwin Drood." 

In 1848 Gogol made a pilgrimage to Jerusa- 
lem, and returned to Russia by way of Odessa. 
The last years of his life were passed in Mos- 
cow in an ever-deepening state of fanatical 
mysticism. His death, in March, 1852, was 
probably due to his insane attempt to keep the 
strict fast. His last days were troubled by 
strange hallucinations. His life-long disorder 
was an acute derangement of the nerves caused 
by self-abuse. 



APPENDIX. 363 

As an example of Gogol's early style, the open- 
ing scene of "Taras Bulba," which has been men- 
tioned by M. Dupuy, may be read with interest : — 

"'Ah! turn around, little son. How funny 
you look ! What kind of a parson's garment 
have you got on ? Is that the way you go in 
your academy ? ' With such words the old 
Bulba met his two sons, who had been studying 
in the theological school in Kief, and who just 
came home to their father. 

"His sons have only just dismounted from 
their horses. They were a couple of hearty 
fellows, who looked from under their brows 
like just graduated seminarists. Their strong, 
healthy faces were covered with the first downy 
hair, as yet untouched by a razor. They were 
very much confused at such a reception by 
their father, and stood motionless, with their 
eyes fixed on the ground. 

" * Hold on, hold on, children ! ' he continued, 
turning them around and around. * What a 
long svitkas you've got on ! Those are fine 
svitkas. Nu y mi) nn> such svitkas as these were 
never yet seen ! Well, now, both of you try 
to run ; I'll see if you don't trip up.' 



3^4 APPENDIX. 

" ' Don't you make fun of us, don't you make 
fun of us, father ! ' at last said the eldest of 
them. 

U€ Fu> what a dandy you are! Why not 
laugh ? ' 

" ' Simply because [Da tak] ; I suppose, you 
are my father ; yet, if you keep on making sport 
of us, by Heaven, I'll give to you ! ' 

"' Akh! a fine kind of a son you are. What's 
that you say to your father ? ' said Taras Bulba, 
falling back a little in surprise. 

" ' Yes, though you are my father. I don't 
regard anybody, or have any respect for any- 
body, who insults me.' 

"'How do you want to fight with me, — with 
fists?' 

" 'It makes no difference to me.' 

iil Nu! let us fight with fists,' said Bulba, 
rolling up his sleeves. 

"And the father and son, instead of saluting 
each other after their long separation, began to 
beat each other angrily. 

" 'The old man must be crazy,' said the pale, 
thin, and kindly mother, who was standing on 
the threshold, and who has not yet had a chance 



APPENDIX. 365 

to embrace her beloved children. ' By Heaven, 
he is crazy ! Here the children have come 
home. For more than a year he has not seen 
them, and now he is doing, God knows what ! 
To fight with fists ! ' 

" ' Yes, he fights gloriously/ said Bulba, 
stopping. [Ei' Bogie /] ' Capital ! . . . So, so ! ' 
he continued, adjusting himself a little. ' There 
won't be any need of trying. He will make a 
good Kazak. — Nu, how are you, little son? 
Give us a kiss.' And the father and son began 
to kiss each other. 

" ' Excellent, little son ; pound everybody 
just as you have thrashed me ; don't give in to 
anybody. Yet you have on a funny rig. What 
kind of a rope is that hanging down? — And, 
you dog, what are you there for with your hands 
by your sides ? ' said he, addressing the younger 
one. 'Why don't you thrash me, you son of a 
dog?' 

" ' Now he is talking nonsense again,' cried 
the mother, at the same time throwing her 
arms around the younger one. 'And what 
nonsense gets into his head ! How can a child 
beat his own father ? As though that was all 



2>66 APPENDIX. 

he had to tend to now. He is a little child ; 
he has travelled such a long way, he must be 
tired ' (this child was more than twenty years 
old, and exactly a Sazhen, almost seven feet 
high). ' He must need to rest now, and have 
something to eat ; and yet he compels him to 
fight ! ' 

"'Ej/ you are a little dandy \mazuntchik\ 
I see,' said Bulba. i Don't listen, little son, to 
your mother : she is a baba [woman], she 
doesn't know any thing. What kind of petting 
do you want ? Your petting is the clear field 
and a good horse ; that is your petting. And 
do you see this sabre ? That is your mother. 
All they are stuffing your heads with is non- 
sense : the academy and all those little books 
— primers and philosophies — are the Devil 
knows what. I spit at it all. I am going to 
send you away next week to the Zaporozhe. 
That is the school for you. It is there only 
where you will learn reason.' 

u 'Won't they stay at home with us but one 
week ? ' asked the thin old mother pitifully, with 
tears in her eyes. ' Poor fellows, they won't 
have time to enjoy themselves. They won't 



APPENDIX. 367 

get any good out of their own home, and I 
sha'n't look at them half enough.' 

* That'll do, that'll do, old woman ! A Kazak's 
got something better to do than spend his time 
with women \babas\ Hurry up, and put on the 
table every thing you've got, — poppy-seed cake 
\pampuskek\ gingerbread, and such like ; pud- 
dings we can get along without. But fetch us 
a whole ram for dinner, and then whiskey ; and 
let's have more whiskey than any thing else : 
not the kind with different kinds of stuff in it, 
— raisins, and other such things, — but straight 
whiskey, the unadulterated, such as'll hiss like 
the devil ! ' 

"Bulba took his sons into the small room. 
Every thing in the room was arranged accord- 
ing to the taste of that time; and that time 
was about the sixteenth century, when the idea 
of the union had just begun to be discussed. 
Every thing was clean and whitewashed. The 
whole wall was adorned with sabres and guns. 
The windows in the room were small, with round 
panes of ground glass, such as can be found 
at the present time only in old churches. On 
the shelves, which occupied the corners of the 



368 APPENDIX. 

room, and which were made triangular in shape, 
were standing earthen pitchers, blue and green 
bottles, silver cups, gilded wine-glasses, of 
Venetian, Turkish, and Circassian workman- 
ship, which had found their way into Bulba's 
room in different ways, — third and fourth 
hand, a very ordinary thing in those bold days. 
The linden benches around the whole room, the 
huge table in the middle of it, the stove occupy- 
ing half of the room, like a fat Russian mer- 
chant's wife, and adorned with tiles with designs 
of cockerels, — all these things were very famil- 
iar to our two young fellows, who used to walk 
home almost every year to spend their vacation ; 
they used to walk because they had no horses, 
and because it was not customary to allow 
scholars to go on horseback. They had only 
the long forelocks which every Kazak who 
carries weapons felt that he had a right to pull. 
Bulba, just as they were about to leave school, 
sent them from his stud a pair of good horses. 

"'Well \iiu\ little sons, before all let us have 
some whiskey. God bless you ! to your health, 
my little sons ; yours, Ostap, and yours, Anclrii ! 
May God grant you be always successful in 



APPENDIX. 369 

battle, that you may beat the Busurmans (Ma- 
hometans), beat the Turks, beat the Tatars, 
and when the Poles begin to do any thing 
against our religion, beat the Poles too ! Nu ! 
hold up your glass. Is the whiskey good ? And 
what is whiskey in Latin ? That's it \to-to\ little 
son. The Latuintsui [Latins] were fools ; they 
did not know there was such a thing as whiskey 
in existence. What was the name of that fel- 
low who wrote Latin verses ? I don't know 
much of reading and writing, and therefore I 
do not remember. Wasn't it Horatsii ? ' 

"' That's a fine father,' said the older son, 
Ostap, to himself. 'The dog knows every 
thing, but he makes believe that he doesn't.' 

" ' I don't believe the arkhimandrit allowed 
you even to smell whiskey,' continued Bulba. 
'Well, now, little sons, tell the truth : did they 
lash you with cherry and maple sticks over the 
back, and everywhere else ? Or maybe, being 
as you are so mighty smart, they used straps 
on you ! I reckon that, besides Saturdays, they 
used to thrash you on Wednesdays and Thurs- 
days too.' 

"'Father, there's no need of bringing up all 



37° APPENDIX. 

that/ said Ostap, in his usual phlegmatic voice. 
' What's past is gone/ 

"'Now we shall pay everybody off/ said 
Andrii, ' with sabres and bayonets. Just let 
the Tatars come in our way!' 

"'That is .good, little son. By Heavens, 
that's good! If that's the case, I shall go 
along with you. By Heavens, I'll go ! What 
the devil is the good of staying here ! What ! 
must I look after the grain and swine-herds, 
or to fool with my wife ? I stay at home for 
her sake ? I am a Kazak. I do not want it ! 
Well, even supposing there is no war, I am 
going with you to the Zaporozhe. We'll have 
a good time. By Heavens, I'm going ! " And 
the old Bulba, little by little, grew excited, and 
finally became entirely fierce. He got up 
from the table, and, trying to look dignified, 
stamped his foot upon the ground. 'To-mor- 
row we'll go ! Why put it off ? What in the 
devil should we sit here for ? What good does 
this hut do us ? What do we want all these 
things for? What's the good of these pots?' 
And, while saying this, Bulba began to smash 
and throw about the pots and the bottles. 



APPENDIX. 37 l 

"The poor old wife, who was long wonted to 
such tricks of her husband, looked on sorrow- 
fully as she sat on the bench. She did not 
dare to say a word ; but after hearing this reso- 
lution, so terrible to her, she could not refrain 
from tears. She looked up at her children, from 
whom such a quick separation threatened her ; 
and no one could describe the whole speechless 
force of her sorrow, which seemed to quiver in 
her eyes and in the tremblingly compressed 
lips. 

"Bulba was terribly stubborn. He was one 
of those characters which could spring up only 
in the rough sixteenth century, and especially 
in the half-nomadic Eastern Europe, when 
ideas were both right and wrong as to the 
possession of lands which were a disputed and 
undecided property. At that time, the Ukrai'na 
was in this state. The everlasting necessity 
of defending the border against three different 
nations, — all this added a sort of free and 
broad character to the actions of its sons, 
and it trained in them a stubborn spirit. This 
stubbornness of spirit was imprinted with full 
strength in Taras Bulba. When Batori raised 



37 2 APPENDIX. 

regiments in Malo-Russia, and roused in them 
that warlike spirit which at first marked only 
the inhabitants of the Rapids, Taras was one 
of the first colonels ; but at the first opportu- 
nity he quarrelled with all the others, because 
the booty obtained from the Tatars by the 
united forces of the Polish and Cossack armies 
was not equally divided between them, and 
because the Polish army received a greater 
share. He, in the presence of all, resigned his 
rank, and said, 'When you colonels don't know 
your own rights, then let the Devil lead you by 
the nose. And I am going to recruit my own 
regiment ; and whoever will attempt to take 
away what belongs to me, I shall know how 
to wipe off his lips/ And, in fact, in a short 
time he collected from his father's estate quite 
a good number of men, made up of both farm- 
laborers and warriors, who gave themselves up 
entirely to his wish. He was generally a great 
hand for taking part in invasions and raids ; he 
heard with his nose, as it were, where and in 
what place an uprising was taking place. Like 
snow upon the head, he would appear on his 
horse. * Nn, children, what is it ? How is 



APPENDIX. 373 

it ? Who is to be beaten ? What is the rea- 
son ? ' was what he generally asked, and then 
took a hand in the affair. First of all, he 
would sternly analyze the circumstances, and 
he would take a hand only in cases when he 
saw that those who seized the weapons had 
really a right to do so ; and this right, according 
to his opinion, was only in the following cases. 
If the nation in the neighborhood had been 
carrying off cattle, or cutting off a portion of 
land ; or if the commissioners had been putting 
on heavy taxes, or had not respected their 
elders, and had spoken in their presence with 
their hats on ; or if they had left the Christian 
religion, — in such cases it was inevitably neces- 
sary to take up the sabre ; but against the 
Busurmans, Tatars, and Turks, he considered 
it just to use the weapon any time, in the name 
of God, Christianity, and Kazatchestvo (Cos- 
sackdom). The position of Malo-Russia at that 
time, having no system whatever, and being in 
perfect uncertainty, brought into existence many 
entirely separate partisans. Bulba led a very 
simple life ; and it would have been impossible 
to distinguish him from any ordinary Kazak in 



374 APPENDIX. 

the service, if his face had not preserved a cer- 
tain expression of command, and even grandeur, 
particularly when he used to make up his mind 
to defend something. 

" Bulba comforted himself beforehand with the 
thought of how he should appear now with his 
two sons, and say, ' Just look what nice fellows 
I have brought to you/ He thought about how 
he should take them to the Zaparozhe, to that 
school of war of the Ukra'fna of that day, how 
he should introduce them to his comrades, and 
superintend their advance in the science of war 
and making raids, which he considered at that 
time one of the first qualities of a knight. At 
first he intended to send them off alone, because 
he deemed it necessary to give himself up 
to the enlistment of a new regiment which 
demanded his presence; but at the sight of his 
sons, who were well built and hearty, all his war- 
rior-spirit suddenly awoke in him, and he made 
up his mind to go along with them on the fol- 
lowing day, though the necessity of this was 
only his stubborn will. 

"Without losing a minute, he began to give 
orders to his csaul> whom he called Tovkatch, 



APPENDIX. 375 

because he was really like some kind of a cold- 
blooded machine : during battle he would pass 
indifferently along the enemy's ranks, sweep- 
ing them down with his sabre as though he was 
mixing dough, like a boxer clearing his way. 
The orders were to the effect that he should 
stay on the farm till orders came for him to set 
out to the war. After this, he went around the 
village, giving orders to some of his people 
to accompany him, to water the horses, to feed 
them with wheat, and to saddle his own horse, 
which he used to call Tchort, or the Devil. 
'JVu, children, now we must go to sleep, and 
to-morrow we shall do what God may instruct 
us to do. Don't give us any bedding ! We don't 
need any bedding : we shall sleep in the dvor /' 
"The night had just embraced the heaven; 
but Bulba always retired early. He made him- 
self comfortable on the carpet, covered himself 
up with a sheep-skin tulup, because the night air 
was rather fresh, and because Bulba was fond of 
covering himself warmly when at home. He 
was soon snoring, and his example was followed 
by the whole court. Every thing that was lying 
in its various corners was snoring and singing. 



37^ APPENDIX. 

Before anybody else the watchman fell asleep, 
because he drank more than anybody else, in 
honor of the arrival of the young lords. 

"The poor mother only was not sleeping. 
She leaned towards the heads of her dear sons, 
who were lying side by side; with a comb she 
straightened their young, carelessly disordered 
locks, and moistened them with her tears. She 
gazed at them with her whole soul, with all her 
feelings ; she metamorphosed herself into one 
gaze, and she could not satisfy herself in look- 
ing at them. She had nursed them with her 
own breast ; she had brought them up, caressed 
them, — and now only for one moment does she 
see them before her. ' My sons, my precious 
sons ! what will become of you ? what fate 
awaits you there ? If only for one week more, 
I might look upon you both,' said she; and her 
tears stood in the wrinkles, which had changed 
her once beautiful face. And indeed she was 
pitiful, like any other woman of that bold age. 
She saw her husband two or three days a year, 
and then for several years there would be no 
tidings of him. And if she did see him, when 
they lived together, what kind of a life was hers ? 



APPENDIX. 377 

She suffered insults, even blows. Only out of 
mercy at times she felt his caresses. She was 
like a strange creature in this assemblage of 
wifeless knights, upon whom the dissolute Zapa- 
rog life threw its stern shadow. The joyless 
days of her youth flashed before her, and her 
cheeks were covered with premature wrinkles. 
All her love, all her feelings, all that is tender 
and passionate in a woman, all turned with her 
into one motherly feeling. She, with heat, 
with passion, with tears, like the gull of the 
steppe \step-tchaika\ looked upon her children. 
Her sons, her dear sons, are taken away from 
her: they are taken away, never to be seen 
again. Who knows ? Maybe at the first battle 
the Tatarin will chop off their heads, and she 
would not even know where their bodies lie : 
the ravening birds may pick them up ; and for 
every little piece of their flesh, for every drop 
of blood, she would have given up her all ! As 
she wept, she looked straight into their eyes, 
which all compelling sleep began to close, and 
she thought to herself, i Maybe Bulba, after 
having a good sleep, will postpone the journey 
for a couple of days. Maybe he decided to go 



37^ APPENDIX. 

so soon because he drank too much.' The 
moon from the height of the heaven was already 
shining over the whole dvoi% filled with sleeping 
people, with the thick mass of willows and tall 
steppe grass, in which the fence around the 
yard was drowned. She was still sitting at the 
heads of her dear sons, without for a moment 
taking off her eyes from them, and not think- 
ing of sleep. 

"The horses, anticipating the dawn of day, 
lay down on the grass, and ceased eating. 
The upper leaves of the willows began to rustle, 
and little by little the rustling stream de- 
scended down over them to the very bottom. 
She sat till the very morning: she was not at 
all tired, and she inwardly wished that the night 
might last as long as possible. From the 
steppe was heard the loud neighing of a 
young colt. 

" Ruddy stripes brightly gleamed in the 
heaven. Bulba suddenly awoke and jumped 
up. He remembered very well every thing 
that he had ordered the day before. ' Nu> fel- 
lows, you've slept long enough : it is time. 
Water the horses. And where is the old 



APPENDIX. 379 

woman ? [Thus he generally called his wife]. 
Be lively, old woman, have something for us to 
eat, because there is a long journey before us/ 

" The poor old woman, who was deprived of 
her last hope, gloomily dragged herself to the 
hut. While with tears in her eyes she was 
preparing every thing for breakfast, Bulba gave 
his orders, busied himself in the stable, and he 
himself selected for his sons his best adorn- 
ments. The seminarists were suddenly trans- 
formed : instead of their old soiled boots, they 
wore red leather ones with silver rings on the 
heels ; pantaloons as wide as the Black Sea, 
with a thousand folds and pleats, were fastened 
tight around the waist with a golden belt ; 
to the belt were attached long straps, with 
tassels and other little ornaments for the pipe. 
The kazakin (a little Russian garment), of gay 
color, of cloth as bright as fire, was tightened 
with an embroidered belt. Silver -mounted 
Turkish pistols were stuck behind the belt ; 
the sabre clattered under their feet. Their 
faces, which were a little burned by the sun, it 
seemed, became handsomer and whiter ; their 
young black mustaches brought out now in 



3§0 APPENDIX. 

somewhat more striking contrast their white- 
ness and the healthy, robust color of youth. 
They looked well under their sheepskin hats 
with golden tips. 

" The poor mother ! As soon as she looked 
up at them, she could not utter a word, and the 
tears were checked in her eyes. 

" ' Nu, little sons, every thing is ready ! 
There is no need of wasting time,' cried Bulba 
at last. ' Now, according to the Christian 
style, all of us must sit down before setting 
out/ 

"All of them sat down, not excepting even 
the serfs, who were standing respectfully at the 
door. ' Now, mother, bless your children/ 
said Bulba. ' Pray to God that they may fight 
with courage, that they may always keep the 
honor of knights, that they may always stand 
up for the Christian faith ; else rather may they 
sink, so that their spirits perish from the world. 
— Go over, children, to your mother. A 
mother's prayer saves in fire and water.' The 
mother, weak as a mother, embraced them, took 
out two small holy images, put them on their 
necks, all the time weeping bitterly. ' May the 



APPENDIX. 3 Sl 

Mother of God — preserve you. — Don't forget, 
little sons, your mother. — Send me some little 
word about you/ Further she could not speak. 

"'Nuylet us start, children,' said Bulba. 

" At the steps their horses were standing. 
Bulba mounted his devil, who wickedly began 
to back on feeling a weight of twenty pads 
(nearly eight hundred pounds), for Bulba was 
exceedingly heavy and fat. 

"When the mother saw that her sons were 
already on the horses, she hurried after the 
younger one, whose face expressed more of 
tenderness. She caught the stirrup, clung to 
his saddle, and, with desperation in all her fea- 
tures, would not let it out of her hands. Two 
strong Kazaks took her gently and carried her 
into the hut. But as soon as they left her, she, 
with all the rapidity of a wild goat, though it 
was not in accordance with her age, ran out of 
the gate, and with an incomprehensible strength 
stopped the horse, and threw her arms around 
one of them in a sort of a mad and senseless 
excitement. 

" They took her away again. 

" The young Kazaks rode on gloomily, but 



3 82 APPENDIX. 

kept their tears, fearing their father, who, how- 
ever, on his part, was also somewhat melan- 
choly, though he tried not to show it. It was 
a gray day ; the green fields gleamed brightly, 
the birds were singing somehow in discord. 
After going some distance, they looked back. 
Their farm seemed as though it was swallowed 
up by the earth ; only two chimneys of their 
humble house stood on the earth ; only the tops 
of the trees, on the branches of which they used 
to climb like squirrels. Only the distant prairie 
remained before them, that prairie which re- 
minded them of the whole history of their life, 
since the days when they used to ride over its 
dewy grass. And now there is only the sweep 
over the well, with a telyega wheel attached to 
its top, standing out by itself against the sky ; 
already the level over which they have passed 
looks, in a distance, like a mountain, and it has 
covered every thing. Farewell, childhood, and 
games, and all, and all, farewell. ,, 



APPENDIX. 3 8 3 



TURGENIEF. 

Among the historical characters belonging to 
Turgenief s family were Piotr, who exposed the 
character of the False Dmitri, and who in con- 
sequence was executed on the Lobno Place 
in Moscow ; and Yakof Turgenief, the well- 
known jester of Peter the Great, who, in the 
year 1700, had to shear off the boyars beards. 
Still more worthy of mention among those who 
bore the name of Turgenief was his cousin 
Nikolai Ivanovitch, who was implicated in the 
celebrated Dekabrist conspiracy of 1825, and 
was exiled by Nicholas. He wrote a large 
work entitled " Russia and the Russians/' He 
was a passionate advocate of the emancipation 
of the serfs. 

Ivan Turgeniefs father served in a regiment 
of cuirassiers stationed at Orel, and there he 
married Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova. His 
father resigned with the rank of colonel, and 



3§4 APPENDIX. 

died in 1835. Ivan's mother lived till she 
reached the age of seventy. In 1820 the 
whole Turgenief family went abroad and vis- 
ited Switzerland. At Berne the little four-year- 
old Ivan Sergeyevitch narrowly escaped falling 
a prey to the bears. His father caught him by 
the leg just as he was pitching headlong into 
the pit. When the family returned to Russia, 
they lived in the Government of Orlof; and 
Ivan Sergeiyevitch had tutors of every nation- 
ality except his own. His first acquaintance 
with Russian literature came from a zei named 
Kheraskof, belonging to his mother. The first 
Russian book that he ever read was the " Ros- 
siada." In 1828 the family moved to Moscow, 
and six years later Ivan Sergeyevitch entered 
the University of Moscow ; but the year follow- 
ing he left for Petersburg, where he graduated 
as kandidat in philology. His first attempts at 
writing were made before he graduated ; and 
his teacher, Pletnef, was able to discover in him 
signs of future greatness. Turgenief says, in 
his " Reminiscences," " At the beginning of 
1827, while I was a student in the third course 
of the University of St. Petersburg, I handed 



APPENDIX. 3 8 5 

the professor of literature, P. A. Pletnef, one 
of the first 'fruits of my muse/ as they used to 
say in those days. It was a fantastic drama, in 
iambic pentameters, entitled 'Stenio.' In one 
of the following lectures, Pletnef, without men- 
tioning any names, analyzed, with his usual 
kindness, this absolutely stupid piece of work, 
in which, with childish incapability, was shown 
a slavish imitation of Byron's ' Manfred.' 
After leaving the university building, and find- 
ing me on the street, he called me to him, and 
caressed me like a father, remarking at the 
same time that there was something \tchto-td\ 
in me. These two words gave me sufficient 
assurance to take to him some more of my 
poetical productions. He picked out two of 
them, and a year later published them in 'The 
Sovremennik,' which he inherited from Pushkin. 
I don't remember the title of one ; but " The 
Old Oak" was the subject of the other, and it 
began thus : — 

1 The forests' mighty tsar with curly head, 
The ancient oak, bent o'er the water's sleeping smooth- 
ness.' " 



3^6 APPENDIX. 

In 1838 Turgenief went to Berlin. On his 
way the ship took fire, and he narrowly escaped 
with his life. He afterwards embodied the 
recollection in his story, or sketch, " A Fire at 
Sea." " I was then nineteen years old," he 
says, in his " Reminiscences," "and I had been 
dreaming about this trip. I was convinced that 
it was possible to acquire in Russia only ele- 
mentary knowledge, but that the source of real 
knowledge was abroad. Among the number of 
the professors in the St. Petersburg University 
at that time, there was not one who could have 
shaken that conviction in me. Moreover, they 
themselves felt the same way. Even the min- 
istry itself, including its chief, Count Uvarof, 
was convinced of this same thing; and the latter 
used to send at his own expense young men to 
the universities of Germany. I was at Berlin 
(at two different times) for about two years. I 
studied philosophy, the ancient languages, his- 
tory, and with special eagerness I devoted my- 
self to Hegel under the guidance of Professor 
Wcrder. As proof of the insufficiency of the 
knowledge to be gained at our own colleges, I 
am going to quote this fact : I studied Latin 



APPENDIX. 387 

antiquity with Zumpt, the history of Greek lit- 
erature with Beck ; but at my own home I was 
compelled to learn by heart Latin and Greek 
grammar, of which I had a very slim acquaint- 
ance, and I was not one of the worst candi- 
dates." 

In his " Reminiscences " he throws further 
light on the causes which induced him to live 
abroad. He says that there was nothing to 
keep him in Russia. Every thing around him 
was calculated to fill him with indignation, con- 
tempt, and scorn. " I could not hesitate long. 
It was necessary either to submit to humilia- 
tion, and calmly make up my mind to follow 
the general rut over the beaten road, or boldly 
to push away 'every thing and all/ even at the 
risk of losing much that was dear and near to 
my heart. And so I did. I threw myself head 
first into the 'German sea/ which should purify 
and regenerate me; and, when at last I emerged 
from its billows, I became a Zapadnik, — a West- 
ern man, and such I remained for all my life." 

In 1 841 Turgenief returned to Russia, going 
directly to Moscow, where his mother was liv- 
ing. Here he became acquainted with the 



3§8 APPENDIX. 

' Slavophiles Aksakof, Khomiakof, and the Kir- 
iyevskys, who at this time were just beginning 
to promulgate their ideas. But Turgenief found 
them hopelessly in the "general rut." 

He tells in his " Reminiscences " how he first 
thought of " Fathers and Sons.'* " I was taking 
baths at Ventnor, a little town on the Isle of 
Wight, in August, i860, when the first thought 
of ' Fathers and Sons' entered my mind, — that 
narrative which checked, as it seems to me, 
forever the kindly disposition of the Russian 
younger generation. More than once I read in 
journals, and heard that 'I was off the track,' 
or was 'bringing in new ideas.' Some praised 
me ; others, on the contrary, blamed me. On 
my part, I must confess that I never attempted 
to 'create a figure.' I always had for my start- 
ing-point, not an idea, but a living person, to 
whom I would gradually add and join suitable 
elements. The same thing happened in ' Fa- 
thers and Sons.' As the foundation of the main 
figure, Bazarof, the person of a young provin- 
cial doctor, who surprised me very much at the 
time, was chosen. He died just before i860. 
This remarkable man appeared to me to contain 



APPENDIX. 3 8 9 

all the elements of what has since received the 
name of Nihilism, but which at that time was 
just beginning to rise, and had not yet been 
formulated. The impression made upon me by 
this person was very strong, and at the same 
time not very clear. At first I could not ac- 
count for him very well ; and I used my utmost 
endeavors to hear and see every thing about 
me, with a view of vivifying the truthfulness of 
my own impressions. This fact confused me. 
In no book of our literature could I find a single 
hint of what seemed to me to be everywhere. 
Reluctantly the doubt arose in me whether I 
was not hunting for a shadow/' 

What he found at last was Bazarof, in which 
type he predicted the spirit of a new epoch, and 
showed "the new man " at the very moment of 
his appearance. No one understood it, and 
hence arose the storm which assailed the 
author. 

11 I experienced impressions/ 1 says Turgenief, 
" of different kinds, but all equally disagreeable 
to me. I noticed coolness, even going so far 
as indignation, in many who had been near and 
dear to me. I received almost fulsome congratu- 



39° APPENDIX. 

lations from people who belonged to the camp 
of my enemies. This confused me : ... it 
grieved me. But my conscience did not re- 
proach me. I knew well that I had been true 
to the type which I had described." 

M. le Vicomte E. Melchior de Vogue, in 
a capital study of Turgenief s life and works, 
thus speaks of the reason for the novelist's 
popularity and influence in Russia: " We read 
books as the passer-by glances at a painting in 
a shop-window, for an instant, from the corner 
of the eye, as he goes to his business. If you 
knew how differently they read their poets 
there [in Russia] ! What for us is only a feast 
for enjoyment is for them the daily bread of 
the soul. It is the golden age of lofty litera- 
ture, which all very youthful peoples in Asia, in 
Greece, in the Middle Ages have seen flourish- 
ing. The writer is the guide for his race, 
the master of a multitude of commingling 
thoughts; still in a measure the creator of his 
language, poet in the ancient and complete 
meaning of the word vates, poet, prophet. 
Simple-hearted and serious readers, new-comers 
into the world of ideas, eager for direction, full 



APPENDIX. 39 x 

of illusions about the power of human genius, 
ask their intellectual guide for a doctrine, for a 
reason for life, for a perfect revelation of the 
ideal. In Russia the few members of the aris- 
tocratic elite long ago reached, and perhaps 
went beyond, our dilettanteism ; but the lower 
classes are beginning to read : they read passion- 
ately, with faith and hope, as we read 'Robin- 
son ' at twelve. . . . For the Moscow merchant, 
the son of the village priest, the small country 
proprietor, to whom a few volumes of Pushkin, 
of Gogol, of Nekrasof represent the encyclo- 
paedia of the human mind, this novel [" Virgin 
Soil," or " Fathers and Sons," or "A Nest of 
Noblemen "] is one of the books of the national 
Bible : it assumes the importance and the epic 
significance which the story of Esther had for 
the people of Judaea, the story of Ulysses for 
the people of Athens, the romance of 'The 
Rose ' or of ' Renart ' for our ancestors. 

"Three years ago, in dedicating the statue of 
Pushkin at Moscow, Turgenief quoted a char- 
acteristic remark made by a peasant standing 
near the monument. In reply to a comrade 
who asked the name of this gentleman in 



39 2 APPENDIX. 

bronze, the muzhik said, ' He was a school- 
master/ The orator appropriated the remark, 
and developed it, saying rightly that the peas- 
ant in his ignorance had hit upon the true 
name of the hero of the celebration. The first 
Russian poet had been the schoolmaster of his 
countrymen, he had given new life to their lan- 
guage and their thought. The day, not far 
distant, doubtless, when Turgenief's statue will 
be erected at Moscow, the muzhik will be able 
to repeat his saying : he also was a school- 
master. 

" His generation listened to him more will- 
ingly than to any other. It would be a mis- 
take to seek solely in what we call talent for 
the reasons of this popular adoption. How 
many among his primitive and passionate read- 
ers troubled themselves about the question 
of talent, of devices of form, delicacies of 
thought ? In literature, as in politics, a people 
follow instinctively the men whom they feel 
belong to themselves, made of their flesh and 
their genius, marked by their virtues and their 
failings. Ivan Sergeyevitch personified the 
master qualities of the Russian people, — their 



APPENDIX. 393 

simple-hearted goodness, simplicity, and resig- 
nation. He was, as it is said popularly, tine dme 
dn bon Dieu : that mighty brain was ruled by a 
child's heart. Never did I approach him with- 
out better comprehending the magnificent 
meaning of the gospel saying about the " sim- 
ple in spirit/' and how this state of soul can 
be allied to the artist's exquisite gifts and 
knowledge. Devotion, generosity of heart 
and of hand, brotherly kindness — all were as 
natural to him as an organic function. In our 
cautious, complicated society, where every one 
is armed for the rough struggle of life, he 
seemed like a person from another sphere, from 
some pastoral and fraternal tribe of the Ural ; 
— some grand, self-forgetful child, following his 
thoughts under the sky, as a shepherd follows 
his flocks in the steppe. 

" Physically, likewise, this tall, calm old man, 
with his somewhat coarse features, his sculptur- 
esque head, and his thoughtful gaze, brought to 
mind certain Russian peasants, — the elder who 
sits at the head of the table in patriarchal fami- 
lies, — but ennobled and transfigured by the 
labor of thought, like those peasants of old who 



394 APPENDIX. 

became monks, were worshipped as saints, and 
are seen represented on the ikonostas with the 
aureole and the majesty of prayer. The first 
time that I met this good giant, the symbolical 
statue of his country, I had great difficulty in 
making my impression clear : it seemed to me 
that I saw and heard a muzhik upon whom had 
descended the fire of genius, who had been 
raised to the pinnacles of mind without losing 
any of his native candor. He would assuredly 
not have been offended by the comparison, he 
who so loved his people." 

M. de Vogue goes on to speak of Turgenief's 
work. "The public," he says, referring to the 
" Annals of a Sportsman," " did not at first 
perceive their hidden significance: the watchful 
censor was deceived. All that was seen in 
them was a literary manifestation of the first 
order, a new note in Russia. Doubtless 
Gogol's influence was apparent in the young 
writer's style, in his comprehension of nature: 
the ' Evenings at the Farm ' set the model for 
the class. It was always the grand and melan- 
choly symphony of the Russian land ; but this 
time the interpretation by the artist was quite 



APPENDIX. 395 

different. No longer were seen Gogol's sharp 
humor, the frankly popular character of his 
paintings, his warm outbursts of enthusiasm 
suddenly checked by touches of irony : in Tur- 
genief, no jests or enthusiasm ; a soberer note, 
a more subdued emotion ; landscapes and men 
are seen in the pale twilight, through an 
idealizing mistiness, yet clearly outlined and 
focussed, as it were, under the eyes of the ever 
watchful observer. 

" The language, also, is richer, more flexible, 
more graceful ; no Russian writer had ever 
carried it to such a degree of expression. It is 
not the clear and limpid prose of Pushkin, who 
had read much of Voltaire, and did not forget 
it. Turgenief's periods run slow and voluptuous, 
like the surface of the mighty Russian rivers, 
without haste, harmonious, amid the reeds, 
bearing water-lilies, floating nests, wandering 
perfumes, showing luminous vistas, and long 
mirages of sky and land, and suddenly re- 
appearing in shady depths. His discourse 
stops to gather up any thing, — the humming 
of a bee, the call of a night-bird, a passing, 
caressing, dying breeze. The most elusive 



396 APPENDIX. 

accords of the grand register of nature it 
translates with the infinite resources of the 
Russian keys, flexible epithets, words welded 
together with poetic fancy, popular joinings 
of sound to sense. 

" I dwell on that which makes the power of 
this book : it is only a song of the earth, and a 
murmur of a few poor souls directly heard by 
us. The writer takes us to the heart of his 
native land ; he leaves us face to face with this 
country ; he disappears, it seems : yet, if not 
he, who then has drawn from things, and con- 
densed on their surface, that mysterious poetry 
which they hide within them, but which so few 
can see, and which we clearly see here ? The 
'Annals of a Sportsman* have charmed many 
French readers ; yet how much they lose in 
color across the double veil of the translation 
and the common ignorance of the country! . . . 

"When these fragments were brought to- 
gether into a volume, the public, till then uncer- 
tain, saw the significance of the work. Some 
one had appeared with courage to develop the 
meaning concealed in Gogol's sinister jest 
about "Dead Souls." What other name can be 



APPENDIX. 397 

given to that gallery of portraits gathered by 
the sportsman, — small country proprietors, 
selfish and hard ; sneaking overseers, idle and 
rapacious functionaries ; beneath this cruel 
society, wretched helots, fallen, as it were, from 
the state of humanity, touching by force of 
misery and submission ? The process — how- 
ever well disguised it be, there is aiways a 
process — was invariably the same. The author 
causes a ludicrous being to pass again and again 
in his lantern, showing all its phases, laugh- 
able and pitiable, in turn, without wants, with- 
out resources, condemned to crepuscular life. 
By the side of the serf appeared the master, 
a half-civilized marionette, a good devil, after 
all, unconscious of the harm he was doing, led 
astray by the fatality of his environment. This 
painting, which would otherwise be ugly, repul- 
sive, the writer clothed with grace and charm, 
in some sort contrary to his desire by the inborn 
virtue of his poetry. Why were all the main- 
springs of life broken in all the heroes of the 
book ? Whence came this malaria over the Rus- 
sian land ? What was the name of this pest ? 
The reader was left the trouble of answering. 



39^ APPENDIX. 

" It is not very exact to say that Turgenief 
attacked serfage. Russian writers, in conse- 
quence of the conditions under which they 
work, as well as by the peculiar turn of their 
genius, never attack openly ; they neither argue 
nor declaim : they paint without drawing con- 
clusions, and they appeal to pity rather than 
wrath. Twenty years later, when Dostoyevsky 
will publish his " Recollections of a Dead 
House" {Zapiski Mertzava Doma), his terrible 
memoirs of ten years in Siberia, he will pro- 
ceed in the same way, without a word of mutiny, 
without a drop of gall, seeming to find what he 
describes as quite natural, only a trifle sad. It 
is the national trait in all things. . . . The 
public understands by a hint. 

" It understood this time. The Russia of 
serfage looked at itself with horror in the mirror 
which was held before its eyes : a long shudder 
shook the country ; between night and morning 
the author was famous, and his cause was half 
gained. The censorship was the last to com- 
prehend, but finally it also comprehended. Pos- 
sibly its sensitiveness will be wondered at : I 
have said that serfage was condemned even in 



APPENDIX. 399 

the Emperor Nicholas's heart. You must know 
that the wishes of the censorship do not always 
coincide with the emperor's wishes ; at least, it is 
backward, it is sometimes a reign behindhand. 
It gave up launching its thunder against the 
book, but it kept its eye on the author. Gogol 
being dead in the interim, Turgenief dedicated 
a warmly eulogistic article to the dead author. 
This article would seem inoffensive enough, as 
it appears in Turgeniefs complete works, 1 and 
we should have difficulty in discovering the 
crime if the criminal had not revealed the secret 
in a very gay note : ' Apropos of that article, 
I remember that one day at Petersburg, a lady 
of very high rank criticised the punishment in- 
flicted upon me, judging it to have been unde- 
served, or at least too severe. As she was 
warmly speaking in my defence, some one said 
to her, " Is it possible that you don't know that 
in this article he called Gogol a great man ? " 
— "It is impossible." — " I assure you that it 

1 Ten volumes, published by Salaief, in Moscow : his poetry, in 
one volume of two hundred and thirty pages, bears no publisher's 
imprint, simply the title, Stikhotvoreniya I. S. Turgenieva, S. 
Feterburg, 1885. 



p 






400 APPENDIX. 

is so." — "Ah! in that case, I have nothing 
more to say. I am sorry, but I see that they 
had to be severe upon him. ,, ' 

"This impertinent epithet, given to a simple 
writer, cost Turgenief a month of arrest ; then 
he was advised to go and meditate in his 
domain. I imagine that he found that society 
was very ill arranged, so unfair are we to the 
power that wills our best good. It must be con- 
fessed, however, that this power sometimes 
serves our interest better than we ourselves, and 
lettres dc cachet are generally in accordance with 
the views of Providence. Thirty years earlier 
an order of exile saved Pushkin by tearing the 
poet from the dissipations of Petersburg, where 
he was wasting his genius, and by sending him 
to the sun of the East, where his genius was to 
ripen. If Turgenief had remained at the capi- 
tal, the warmth of youth and compromising 
friendships, perchance, might have brought him 
into some barren political quarrel : sent into 
the solitude of the woods, he lived there labo- 
rious years, studying the humble provincial life 
of Russia, and gathering materials for his first 
great novels." 



APPENDIX. 4 01 

An anonymous writer, who knew Turgenief 
intimately, contributed, shortly after his death, 
to "The London Daily News," an article, some 
of the details of which are worthy of preserva- 
tion : " Turgenief hated luxury. The more he 
advanced in life, the more he prized simplicity 
in all things. His bedroom at Les Fresnes l had 
an almost austere aspect. The bed and toilet- 
stand were in iron ; and the desk, drawers, and a 
large bookcase, in mahogany, of a plain design. 
Some photographs and engraved likenesses of 
literary and other friends broke the monotony 
of the wall. Portrait-cartes, many of which had 
autographs of those whom they represented, 
were stuck into the frame of the chimney glass. 

"Turgenief was the youngest of three very 
distinguished brothers. Were the eldest of the 
trio now living, he would be almost a centena- 
rian. He remembered Buonaparte, Bernardin, 
St. Pierre, Talleyrand, Sir Walter Scott, — of 
whom he was for some weeks a guest at Abbots- 
ford, — Miss Edgeworth when she was in the 
zenith of her fame ; visited Mme. de Stael at 
Coppet, and fell in with Byron as he was mak- 

1 The summer home of his friends the Viardots, at Bougival. 



402 APPENDIX. 

ing a tour on the Rhine. The eldest Turgenief 
was a many-sided man. Though not a profes- 
sional author, he had great literary qualities. 
His political insight and sagacity were no less 
remarkable, and he had a wider experience of 
human nature than perhaps any other Euro- 
pean of his time. Though he belonged to a 
family which stood well with the Court and 
high in the administration, he enjoyed close 
intercourse with his 'unmasked countrymen.' 
He thus designated the serfs, who had learned 
to be patient and resigned, but were unable to 
dissimulate. . Nevertheless, he was accomplished 
in every polite art, and, if he had chosen, might 
have risen to the highest diplomatic position. 
His education was French on Russian soil. 
Voltaire and Diderot were his early school- 
masters. When he grew up, he made wide 
incursions into English literature, and came to 
the conclusion that Maria Edgeworth had 
struck on a vein which most of the great novel- 
ists of the future would exclusively work. She 
took the world as she found it, and selected 
from it the material that she thought would be 
interesting to write about in a clear and natural 



APPENDIX. 4°3 

style. It was Ivan Turgenief himself who told 
me this, and he modestly said that he was an 
unconscious disciple of Miss Edgeworth in set- 
ting out on his literary career. He had not the 
advantage of knowing English; 1 but, as a youth, 
he used to hear his brother translate to visitors, 
at his country house in the Uralian, passages 
from 'Irish Tales and Sketches/ which he 
thought superior to her three-volume novels. 
Turgenief also said to me, ' It is possible, nay, 
probable, if Maria Edgeworth had not written 
about the poor Irish of the County Longford, 
and the squires and squireens, that it would not 
have occurred to me to give a literary form 
to my impressions about the classes parallel to 
them in Russia. My brother used, in pointing 
out the beauties of her unambitious works, to 
call attention to their extreme simplicity, and 
to the distinction with which she treated the 
simple ones of the earth/ 

1 Mr. Henry James, in his Atlantic Monthly article upon Tur- 
genief, says : " He had read a great deal of English, and knew the lan- 
guage remarkably well, — too well I used often to think ; for he liked 
to speak it with those to whom it was native, and, successful as the 
effort always was, it deprived him of the facility and raciness with 
which he expressed himself in French." 



4°4 APPENDIX. 

"Turgeniefs stature was far above the aver- 
age. He was admirably proportioned, and, 
when young, could walk as far in a day as a 
tough horse would amble, and that without any 
oppressive sense of fatigue. The big bones 
supported tremendous muscles, which at no 
time of his life were clogged with adipose tis- 
sue. When I knew him, his thick, long hair 
and flowing beard were white as snow ; but as 
the complexion was fresh, the eye bright, the 
carriage upright, the voice resonant, I never 
thought of him as an old man. This giant 
wrote a neat and almost delicate hand. I have 
before me a book of his with an autograph 
inscription which he sent me last winter. . . . 
This autograph, though almost ladylike in its 
delicacy, is very free and unconventional. Tur- 
genief felt what was beautiful in minute and 
lowly things. He was one of those who are 
happy in admiring flowers in the valley of 
humiliation. In some respects he was a big 
child. Nobody was more easy to amuse. He 
used to say that Providence was so kind in 
throwing in his way the kind of persons who 
exactly suited him. Liking fine arts and music, 



APPENDIX, 405 

and disliking fashion and worldly frivolity, he 
deemed it a piece of rare good luck to fall in 
with Louis Viardot and his gifted wife {nee 
Garcia), and to be allowed to enter their family 
circle. . . . 

"Turgenief's conversation was analogous to 
his handwriting. It was light, delicate, of a 
free and quite original style, and abounded in 
picturesque traits. Nothing was forced or far- 
fetched. His ideas came in the bright, easy 
flow of a quick-running and well-fed streamlet. 
It was all the same to him whether he was 
brought forward or unnoticed in society, for he 
was neither shy nor vain. He rarely, in talk- 
ing, broached a subject; but there was no 
subject on which he could not talk with ease. 
The politician, philosopher, artist, poet, novelist, 
intelligent or simple, woman or child, found 
him good company. Whatever interested man- 
kind appeared to concern him, and to be a thing 
to study. At the Universal Exhibition of 1878 
I found Turgenief in the United States Agri- 
cultural Department studying horse-shoes and 
horse-shoe nails with as much zest as he after- 
wards showed in comparing the works of the 



406 APPENDIX. 

English, Russian, and German schools of pic- 
torial art. The person who explained to him 
the peculiar merits of the horse-shoe nails was 
a character ; and his peculiarities, which were 
racy of the soil of Texas, acted as a stimulant 
on the Russian novelist. " 

" Theoretically, there was no depth of human 
degradation with which the Russian novelist 
was not acquainted ; but it was said that per- 
sonally no vice ever touched him. ' Gros inno- 
cent ' was a term which M. Viardot often applied 
to him in their intimate conversation. The 
giant was 'naif' He preserved until old age 
the impressionable eyes of childhood, and a 
freshness of nature which to those who did not 
know him must seem incompatible with his 
extensive knowledge of human nature, which 
he studied as a student at Moscow and Berlin, 
as a functionary at St. Petersburg and in other 
parts of Russia, and as an exile in Paris. Al- 
though an old bachelor, he was free from 
crotchets and angles. He was glad to oblige, 
often obliged, sometimes was heartily thanked ; 
and, when he met with ingratitude, he did 
not think about it. Flaubert was the French 



APPENDIX. 4°7 

novelist whom he best liked as a man and a 
writer. But he was of opinion that he travelled 
too far south when he went to Carthage 1 to look 
for a heroine. His eyes were not used to the 
glaring landscape of North Africa. They dis- 
cerned better the cool tints of the Normandy 
landscape. Plots, he thought, spoiled novels, 
which were peintures de mceurs ; and he was 
glad to see that the taste for them was dying 
out. Dickens, in his opinion, was at his best 
in the ' Pickwick Papers,' because he had not 
to be thinking about a plot, instead of letting 
his pen run on according to the humor of the 
moment. The plot was necessary for a drama, 
but in the way of a novelist, who should, above 
every thing else, keep truth in view. . . . 

"Turgenief was of opinion that a splendidly 
picturesque country was a bad soil for literary 
or artistic production. Strong emotions or 
sensations tended to dethrone the faculty of 
exact observation upon which we are dependent 
for aesthetic enjoyment in flat districts. We 
console ourselves for the prose of a landscape 
in looking with an almost microscopic eye at 
the plants and insects, and come to see a world 

1 Referring to Salammbo. 



4°S APPENDIX. 

replete with beauty and animation in a tangle 
of gorse, brambles, and humble field-flowers. In 
expressing to me this theory, he asked, ' Did 
you ever see a mountaineer who was sensible 
to the beauty and song of a small bird ? He 
watches the flight of game and birds of prey. 
But, for my part, I have found him indifferent 
to the lark and swallow. My first acquaintance 
with the skylark was precisely in looking about 
for compensation for the ugliness of a flat near 
Berlin. I shall never forget the broadening out 
of the aesthetic facultv on this occasion. The 
little creature rose almost from under my feet, 
and went up singing her joyful song, which I 
heard long after she was invisible. I then 
remarked the beauty of the sky and of many 
other things which I should not otherwise have 
noticed.' " 

A few sentences from the "noble discourse" 
spoken by M. Renan at Turgenief's tomb, on 
Oct. i, 1883, will fittingly bring this note to a 
close. 

"Turgenief was an eminent writer. He was, 
above all, a great man. I shall speak to you 



APPENDIX. 4°9 

only of his soul as it always appeared to me in 
the pleasant retreat which an illustrious friend- 
ship had provided for him among us. 

" Turgenief received, by that mysterious de- 
cree which makes human avocations, the 
noblest gift of all : he was born essentially im- 
personal. His consciousness was not that of 
an individual more or less finely endowed by 
nature : he was in some sort the consciousness 
of a people. Before his birth he had lived thou- 
sands of years ; infinite series of visions were 
concentrated in the depths of his heart. No 
man has been to such a degree the incarnation 
of an entire race. A world lived in him, spoke 
by his lips ; generations of ancestors lost in 
the sleep of ages, without voices, through him 
came to life and to speech. 

"The silent genius of collective masses is 
the source of all great things. But the masses 
have no voice. They can only feel and stam- 
mer. They need an interpreter, a prophet, to 
speak for them. Who shall be this prophet ? 
Who shall tell their sufferings, denied by those 
who are interested in not seeing them, their 
secret aspirations which upset the sanctimo- 



4 x O APPENDIX. 

nious optimism of the contented ? The great 
man, gentlemen, when he is at once a man of 
genius and a man of heart. That is why the 
great man is least free of all men. He does 
not do, he does not say, what he wishes. A 
God speaks in him ; ten centuries of suffering 
and of hope possess him and rule him. Some- 
times it happens to him, as to the seer in the 
ancient stories of the Bible, that, when called 
upon to curse, he blesses ; according to the 
spirit which moves, his tongue refuses to obey. 
" It is to the honor of the great Slav race, 
whose appearance in the world's foreground is 
the most unexpected phenomenon of our cen- 
tury, that it was first expressed by a master so 
accomplished. Never were the mysteries of an 
obscure and still contradictory consciousness 
revealed with such marvellous insight. It was 
because Turgenief at once felt, and perceived 
that he felt : he was the people, and he was of 
the elect. He was as sensitive as a woman and 
as impassive as a surgeon, as free from illu- 
sions as a philosopher and as tender as a child. 
Happy the race, which, at its beginning a life 
of reflection, can be represented by such images, 



APPENDIX. 4 11 

simple-hearted as well as learned, at once real 
and mystical. 

"When the future shall have brought to their 
real proportions the surprises kept in reserve 
for us by this wonderful Slav genius, with its 
ardent faith, its depth of intuition, its individ- 
ual idea of life and death, its martyr spirit, its 
thirst for the ideal, Turgenief's paintings will 
be priceless documents, something, as it were, 
like the portrait of a man of genius, if it 
were possible to be had, taken in his infancy. 
The perilous solemnity of his duty as inter- 
preter of one of the great families of humanity, 
Turgenief clearly saw. He felt that he had 
souls in his charge ; and, as he was a man of 
honor, he weighed each of his words. He trem- 
bled for what he said, and what he did not say. 

" His mission was thus wholly that of the 
peacemaker. He was like the God of the Book 
of Job, who ' makes peace upon the heights.' 
What everywhere else caused discord became 
with him a principle of harmony. In his great 
bosom, contradictions united. Cursing and 
hatred were disarmed by the magic enchant- 
ments of his art. 



4 12 APPENDIX. 

"That is why he is the common glory of 
schools, between which so many disagreements 
exist. This great race, divided because it is 
great, finds in him its unity. Hostile brethren 
separated by different ways of interpreting the 
ideal, come all of you to his tomb. All of you 
have the right to love him ; for he belonged to 
all of you, he held you all in his heart. Admir- 
able privilege of genius ! The repellent sides 
of things do not exist for him. In him all finds 
reconciliation. Parties most opposed unite to 
praise him and admire. In the region whither 
he carries us, words which stir irritation in the 
vulgar lose their sting. Genius accomplishes in 
a day what it takes centuries to do. It creates 
an atmosphere of higher peace when those who 
were foes find that in reality they have been 
co-laborers ; it opens the era of the grand 
amnesty when those who have been battling in 
the arena of progress sleep side by side and 
hand in hand. 

"Above the race, in fact, stands humanity; 
or, if you prefer, reason. Turgenief was of a 
race by his manner of feeling and painting. He 
belonged to all humanity by his lofty philoso- 



APPENDIX, 4 X 3 

phy, facing with calm eyes the conditions of 
human existence, and seeking without prejudice 
to know the reality. This philosophy brought 
him sweetness, joy in life, pity for creatures, 
for victims above all. Ardently he loved this 
poor humanity, often blind, in sooth, but so 
often betrayed by its leaders. He applauded 
its spontaneous effort towards well being and 
truth. He did not reprove its illusions ; he 
was not angry because it complained. The 
iron policy which mocked at those who suffer 
was not for him. No disappointment arrested 
him. Like the universe, he would have begun 
a thousand times the ruined work : he knew 
that justice can wait ; the end will always be 
success. He had truly the words of eternal 
life, the words of peace, of justice, of love, and 
of liberty. ,, 



4H APPENDIX. 



COUNT LYOF N. TOLSTOI. 

Count Tolstoi traces his ancestry back to 
Count Piotr Andreyevitch Tolstoi', a friend and 
companion of Peter the Great. In all proba- 
bility the unnamed atavus who lurks in the 
patronymic Andreyevitch was merely distin- 
guished by his size, — Andrew the Stout. Many 
Russian family names, just as is the case with 
our own English appellations, are derived from 
characteristics or resemblances. The great 
Speransky was a hopeful foundling ; Solovief 
recalls our nightingales ; Pobyedonovtsof means 
" of the victorious ; " the name of Katkof 
may refer to the proverbial rolling stone ; 
Gogol is a species of duck called the golden 
eye ; the report of cannon may be heard in 
Pushkin's name ; the ancestor of Griboyedof 
was probably an eater of mushrooms. 

Tolstoi's father was a retired lieutenant-colo- 
nel, who died in 1839. His mother, the Prin- 



APPENDIX 4 X S 

cess Marya Nikolayevna Volkonskai'a, died 
when Count Lyof was only two years old, and 
he -was brought up by a distant relative, 
Mme. Yergolskaia. At YasmaTa Polyana his 
education was desultory. In 1840 the five 
children were taken in charge by a relative of 
their mother, Pelagia Ilinishna YushkovaTa, who 
lived at Kazan. It was thus that Lyof Tolstoi' 
happened to enter the university of that city in 
1843. After a few years of study, he suddenly 
determined to leave the university without 
graduation. The rektor and the professors 
argued with him, but in vain ; and he went 
back to his ancestral estate, where he lived till 
1851, very rarely visiting the capital. A visit 
from his beloved brother Nikolai, who was an 
officer in the army of the Caucasus, inspired 
him to see "cities of men and manners, cli- 
mates, councils," though least of all the cities 
of men. Especially strong was his desire to 
be with his brother in the Kavkaz, where Rus- 
sia's greatest poets had won their proudest 
laurels. The impressions made on him by the 
splendid scenery of the ' white mountains/ and 
by the rough, half-savage life, were so strong 



4 J 6 APPENDIX. 

that in 1851 he entered the service, like Olenin, 
as a yunker, or ensign-bearer in the Fourth 
Battery of the Twentieth Artillery, the same in 
which his brother was an officer. 

Here in the Caucasus Count Tolstoi* first 
began to write fiction. He planned to weave 
his recollections of family life and old tradi- 
tions into a great novel. Fragments of this 
work were written and afterwards published 
in the " Sovremennik." " Infancy " (Dyetstvo) 
came out in 1852. " Adolescence " (Otrotckes- 
tvd) was also written then, and several of his 
brilliant sketches of wild life, — " The Inva- 
sion," "The Felling of the Forest,' , and, as has 
been said, "The Cossacks." "The Cossacks" 
is translated into English by Mr. Eugene 
Schuyler. A very little polishing would make it 
a brilliant piece of literary work : in its present 
form it is crude and rough. 

Count Tolstoi lived two years in the Cauca- 
sus, taking part in various guerilla expeditions, 
and enduring in common with the soldiers all 
the hardships of frontier warfare. Here on 
the spot he made his powerful and life-like 
studies of the Russian soldier, which are seen 



APPENDIX, 4 l 7 

in his " War Sketches ' ( Voyemmie Razskazni). 
At the breaking out of the Crimean War, 
Count Tolstoi was transferred to the army of the 
Danube, and served on Prince M. D. Gortcha- 
kof 's staff. At Sevastopol, whither he went after 
the. Russian army was driven from the princi- 
palities, he was attached to the artillery. His 
literary work had attracted attention in high 
quarters, and orders were sent to the front to 
see that he was not exposed to danger. In 
May, 1855, he was appointed division com- 
mander : he took part in the battle of the 
Tchernaia, was in the celebrated storming of 
Sevastopol, and after the battle was sent as 
special courier to Petersburg. At the end of 
the campaign Count Tolstoi retired, and the 
next winter he spent at Moscow and Peters- 
burg. This was a period of great literary 
activity. Besides his stories, " Sevastopol in 
December," and " Sevastopol in May," there 
appeared in the magazines "Youth" (Yunosi), 
"Sevastopol in August," "Two Hussars" (Dva 
Gusdri), and " Three Deaths " (Tri Smertt). 

After the liberation of the serfs, Count Tol- 
stoi, like many conscientious Russian proprie- 



4 l & APPENDIX. 

tors, felt it his duty to live on his estate. He 
was profoundly interested in agronomic ques- 
tions, and in the application to the Slavic 
commune of Occidental methods, which he 
studied abroad for himself. He was still more 
interested in popular education ; and a school 
journal, called "YasnaTa Polyana," which he 
established, discussed all pedagogical questions. 
He also published a series of primers, readers, 
spellers, in paper covers and large type. It 
was about this time that a Russian journalist 
met Count Tolstoi; and his account of the inter- 
view is interesting, as showing the novelist's 
views a quarter of a century ago. He says, — 
"In 1862 I became acquainted with him in 
Moscow. I saw before me a tall, wide-shoul- 
dered, thin-waisted man, about thirty-five years 
old, with a mustache, but without a beard, with 
a serious, even gloomy expression of face, which, 
however, was softened by a gleam of kindliness 
whenever he laughed. Our conversation turned 
on the occurrences which at that time were ex- 
citing Russian life. Count Tolstoi immediately 
showed that he lived outside of this life, that 
the interests of the class which regards itself 



APPENDIX, 4!9 

as cultured were foreign to him. He seemed 
to be opposed to progress, which, in his opinion, 
was only advantageous for the smaller portion 
of society, having plenty of time to spend, and 
which was absolutely injurious for the majority, 
for the people; and for them it was just as 
disadvantageous as it was profitable for the 
minority. . . . Those present argued angrily 
with him : he himself sometimes was drawn 
away, sometimes he spoke ironically. I lis- 
tened more than I spoke. At the time when 
all were infatuated with progress, such original 
boldness of thought was remarkable ; and I felt 
an involuntary sympathy for this Rousseau, 
who began to contrast the products of nature 
with the products of civilization, — forests, wild 
creatures, rivers, physical development, purity 
of morals, and other such things. It seemed 
that this man was living the life of the peas- 
antry, sharing their views, that he was devoted 
to the welfare of the people with all the strength 
of his soul, though he understood the people in 
different way from others. The proof was his 
school, — those maltchiks, of whom he spoke 
with evident love, praising their talents, their 



4 2 ° APPENDIX. 

powers of comprehension, their artistic sense, 
their moral virginity, which was so far from 
being the case with children of other nation- 
alities/' 

The latter years of Count Tolstoi's life, since 
the publication of " War and Peace " and 
"Anna Karenina," are somewhat wrapped in 
mystery. Various wild stories, founded on the 
evident bias of " My Confession " and " My 
Religion/' have assumed almost the proportions 
of myth. It may be that at the present day, 
that we of the calm, rational, sceptical, West- 
ern world are granted the privilege of seeing 
the actual evolution of a myth, as a boy may 
see a chrysalis unfold. 

The Russian race, standing with its Janus 
face towards the sunset and the more mystical 
sunrise, a link, as it were, between Occidental 
fact and Oriental fancy, might well allow us the 
spectacle. " My Religion " declares that titles, 
emoluments, dignities, and all such things, are 
vain. Next we hear that Count Tolstoi' is only 
a muzhik. No man has a right to wealth. We 
hear that the opulent aristocrat has stripped 
himself to give to the poor. All must earn 



APPENDIX, 4 21 

their bread by the sweat of the brow. The 
young sons of the count are next heard of as 
crossing-sweepers. The truth probably is, that 
Count Tolstoi has in reality changed little from 
the Olenin of " The Cossacks/' praying for 
occasion of self-sacrifice, for chance of renunci- 
ation, changed little from the threefold mani- 
festation of himself in "War and Peace/' 
working for the same end, or from the twofold 
and simpler manifestation of himself, morally 
in Levin, socially in Vronsky, of " Anna Kare- 
nina." The little picture of him given by the 
Russian journalist casts a flood of light on the 
man ; and therefore it was but a fulfilment of 
prophecy to read that Count Tolstoi", instead 
of beggaring his children, instead of deserting 
the pen of the writer for the awl of the cobbler, 
was brave and cheerful and healthy in body 
and mind, superintending his schools, cultivat- 
ing his ancestral desyatins, and writing stories 
when the mood was on him. 

This brief sketch of Count Tolstoi's life may 
fitly come to a conclusion with an acute bit of 
criticism from a Russian writer. It is very 
possible that his marriage to Sofia Andreyevna 



422 APPENDIX. 

Beers, the daughter of a Muscovite professor, 
which took place in 1862, may have cast a back 
gleam, and inspired the thought of creating 
the gracious forms that move through Count 
Tolstoi's later novels. At all events, this is 
what the critic said when " War and Peace " 
appeared, at the end of i860, " It is remarkable, 
that in all Tolstoi's works, until the appearance 
of " Voina i Mir" there is not a single female 
figure brought out in strong relief; but here 
were seen a whole pleiad, wonderfully clear, 
psychologically true, and beautifully described. 
The richness and variety in the figures of the 
men, the splendid description of the battles, a 
perfect mass of marvellously described scenery, 
in which persons of all classes appear, begin- 
ning with emperors, and ending with muzhiks 
and babas, make this work one of the greatest 
ornaments of our literature." 



APPENDIX. 4 2 3 



Note to P. 145 — Tchernuishevsky. 

It is commonly reported in Russia, that Tchernui- 
shevsky wrote yet another novel besides Teh to Dye la /, 
entitled Prolog Pro logo/ (a Prologue of Prologues), 
which may possibly be still in existence in manuscript. 



Note to P. 202. — Dostoyevsky. 

Fe6dor Mikhaflovitch Dostoyevsky's father was a 
doctor. The boy, who was one of a large family, grew 
up pale and thin. He had a nervous and impression- 
able nature, with some tendency to hallucination. He 
was very fond of the woods. He tells in his recollec- 
tions of his childhood, that his " special delight was the 
forest, with its mushrooms and wild cherries, with its 
beetles and birds, its porcupines and squirrels, with 
its delicious damp of the flying leaves." He had all 
the books that he desired. By the time that he was 
twelve, he had read all of Sir Walter Scott's and Coo- 
per's novels, besides some Russian authors, including 
Karamzin's great history. At fifteen, Dostoyevsky 



4 2 4 APPENDIX. 

was sent to Petersburg, where he entered the main 
engineering school. Notwithstanding his passion for 
literature, which was shared by many of his school- 
mates, he distinguished himself in mathematics, and 
graduated number three in a class of thirty. About 
this time he was deprived of both father and mother. 

"While he was living in Petersburg," says Mr. S. S. 
Skidelsky, " he visited all the slums and haunts of pov- 
erty, for the sake of collecting materials for his future 
literary work." Dostoyevsky tells in his recollections, 
quoted by Polevoi, that in the winter of 1845 he be- 
gan his first story, " Poor People " {Byednuie Liudi). 
u When I finished the tale, I did not know what to do 
with it, or where to place it. I had no literary ac- 
quaintances, except possibly Grigor6vitch, who at that 
time had written nothing except ' Petersburg Organ- 
grinders,' in a magazine. . . . He came to me one 
day in May, and said, ' Show me the manuscript : 
Nekrasof is going to publish a magazine next year, 
and I want to show it to him.' I took it over to Ne- 
krasof. We shook hands ; I became confused at 
the thought that I had come with my writing, and I 
quickly beat a retreat without saying another word. 
I had very little hope of success ; for I stood in awe of 
the party of ' the Country Annals,' as the literary men 
of that day were called. I read Byelinsky's criticisms 



APPENDIX. 4 2 5 

eagerly, but he seemed to me too severe and cruel ; 
and 'he will make sport of my " Poor People," ' I used 
to think at times, but only at times. ' I wrote it with 
passion, almost with tears. Is it really possible that 
all these minutes spent with pen in hand over this 
story, that all this is falsehood, mirage, untrue feeling ? ' 
But I had these thoughts only now and then, and 
immediately the doubts returned again. 

" On the evening of the very day that I handed him 
the manuscript, I went a long way to see one of my 
former classmates. We talked all night about * Dead 
Souls,' and we read it again, — I don't know how many 
times it made. At that time it was fashionable, when 
two or three young men met, to say, ' Hadn't we 
better read some Gogol, gentlemen?' and then to 
sit down and read late into the night. ... I returned 
home at four o'clock, in the white Petersburg night, 
bright as day. It was a beautiful warm time ; and 
when I reached my room I could not go to sleep, but 
opened the window, and sat down by it. Suddenly 
the bell rang : it surprised me greatly ; and in an 
instant Grigordvitch and Nekrasof were hugging me in 
a glory of enthusiasm, and both of them were almost 
in tears. The evening before they had returned home 
early, took up my manuscript, and began to read it 
for a trial : ' By ten pages we shall be able to judge.' 



4 2 6 APPENDIX. 

But after they had finished ten pages they decided 
to read ten more. And afterwards, without budging, 
they sat the whole night through till early morning, 
taking turns in reading aloud when one got tired. 
' He read about the death of the student/ said Gri- 
gorovitch, after we were alone ; ' and suddenly I 
noticed, that, when he reached the place where the 
father runs after his son's coffin, Nekrasof s voice broke 
Once, and a second time, and all at once it failed 
entirely. He pounded with his fist on the manuscript : 
" Akh y what a man ! ,J That was said about you ; and 
so we spent the whole night.' 

" When they finished the manuscript, they ex- 
claimed, simultaneously, ' Let us go and find him 
right away. Suppose he is asleep, this is more im- 
portant than sleep.' . . . They staid half an hour. 
For half an hour we talked about, God knows what, 
understanding each other by half w r ords, by exclama- 
tions, so eager were we. We talked about poetry, 
about prose, about the c situation of affairs,' and 
of course about Gogol, quoting from the ' Revizor ' 
and i Dead Souls,' but chiefly about Byelinsky. . . . 
Nekrasof took the manuscript to Byelinsky that very 
day. ' A new Gogol has appeared,' shouted Nekrasof, 
entering with ' Poor People.' ' Gogols with you 
spring up like mushrooms,' remarked Byelinsky 



APPENDIX. A 2 7 

severely ; but he took the manuscript. When Nekra- 
sof returned that same evening, Byelinsky met him in 
perfect enthusiasm. ( Bring him, bring him as soon 
as you can ! ' " 

On the next day an interview took place between 
Dostoyevsky and the great Russian critic. Dostoyev- 
sky thus describes it : " He began to speak with me 
ardently, with flashing eyes. 'Do you understand 
yourself what you have written ? ' he shouted at me 
several times, in his own peculiar way. ' Only by 
your own unassisted genius as an artist, could you 
have written this. But have you realized all the terri- 
ble truth which you have presented before us ? It is 
impossible that you, at the age of twenty, could under- 
stand it. . . . You have touched the very essence of 
the matter, you have reached the most vital inward- 
ness. We journalists and critics only argue ; we try 
to explain it with words : but you are an artist, and 
with a single stroke put the very truth into shape so 
that it is tangible, so that the simplest reader can 
understand instantly. Here lies the secret of the 
artistic, the truth of art. Here is the service that the 
artist performs for truth. The truth is revealed and 
imparted to you ; it is your gift as an artist. Value 
your talent, and be true to it, and you will be a great 
writer.' 



4 2 8 APPENDIX. 

" I went from him in a state of rapture. I stopped 
at the corner of his house, looked up at the sky, at 
the bright sun, on the passing people, and all; and 
with my whole body I felt that a glorious moment 
had come into my life, — a most important crisis ; 
that a new life had begun, such as I had never antici- 
pated in my most passionate dreams (and at that time 
I was a great dreamer). ' Is it really true that I am 
so great?' I asked myself, full of shame, full of timid 
glory. — Oh, do not laugh ! — Never again did I have 
an idea that I was great. But at that time was it 
possible to bear it calmly ? Oh ! I will be worthy of 
this praise." 

His name from this time began to stand with Tur- 
g^niefs, Byelinsky's, Iskander's (Herzen's), and others, 
in the pages of the Russian magazines. This period, 
which began so auspiciously, was clouded by a catas- 
trophy which greatly affected his whole life. In 1849 
he was arrested and imprisoned on the charge of 
being engaged in a secret political society. His older 
brother, a married man, the father of three children, 
was also arrested on the same charge. Dostoyevsky 
knew that his brother's family was almost penniless, 
that his brother had taken no active part in the Pet- 
rashevsky Society, and had only borrowed books from 
the general library. The brother, however, was soon 



APPENDIX. 4 2 9 

released by the interposition of the Emperor Nicholas. 
While he was in prison, Fe6dor Mikhai'lovitch wrote 
his beautiful story, "The Little Hero." He was con- 
demned to death ; but the sentence, without his 
knowledge, was commuted to transportation to the 
mines. He wrote his brother on the 3d of January, 
1850: "To-day we were taken to the Semyonovsky 
Place. Here the sentence of death was read to us, 
we were given the cross to kiss, the sabres were 
broken over our heads, and our death-toilet was pre- 
pared, — white shirts. Then three of our number 
were placed at the ' disgraceful post,' ready for exe- 
cution. I was the sixth. Three were summoned at 
a time : consequently my turn came next, and I had 
only a second to live. I remembered thee, my broth- 
er, and all of thy Household ; at the last moment 
thou alone wert in my mind ; here, only, I learned 
how I loved thee, my dear brother ! ... At last the 
drums sounded a retreat. Those who were fastened 
to the ' disgraceful post ' were taken down, and it was 
announced that his Imperial Majesty had granted us 
our lives." 

" Dostoyevsky, as a thoroughly religious and highly 
moral man," says Polevoi, " endured all the depriva- 
tions of his life in the mines with remarkable firmness 
and undisturbed equanimity. His faith was strength- 



43° APPENDIX. 

ened, not by the Bible alone, which was the only book 
allowed him in prison, but by his love for i Poor Peo- 
ple/ to whom he had sworn to be true till he died." 

After he spent a number of years in the mines, he 
entered the military service, and was quickly promoted 
to be an officer. He says, " I remember that soon 
after leaving the Siberian prison, in 1854, I began to 
read all the literature written during the fat years 
since my imprisonment. The ' Annals of a Sports- 
man ' had just begun to be published ; and Turge- 
nief s first stories I read at one draught. The sun 
of the- steppe shone upon me, spring began, and with 
it an entirely new life, an end to prison, — freedom ! " 

His passion for literature, so long restrained, broke 
out with energy and strength; and even before he 
quitted military service and returned to Petersburg, 
he wrote a few little trifles. In Petersburg he took 
part in the journal, " The Times" ( Vremya), edited by 
his brother Mikhail Mikhailovitch. In i860 appeared 
the first collection of his works, and shortly after 
appeared his great novel, "The Degraded and In- 
sulted" (Unizhbnnuie i Oskorblonnnie) . At this 
time Turg£nief, Gontcharof (author of "Oblomof"), 
Grigorovitch, and Count Lyof Tolstoi" were in the full 
bloom of production, and Dostoyevsky's book was 
not warmly received. But the most antagonistic 



APPENDIX. 43 l 

critics were silenced when "The Recollections of a 
Dead House " appeared. It immediately gave him 
the reputation as one of the greatest lights of Russian 
literature. 

In 1863 Dostoyevsky's wife died; and in the fol- 
lowing year he lost his beloved brother, whose journal, 
"The Times," passed into his hands. But he was 
entirely unused to business, and was placed in a very 
embarrassing situation, which was intensified by a 
strange public impression that it was the novelist who 
was dead. Consequently its circulation was greatly 
reduced, and Feodor Mikhai'lovitch had to give it up. 
As a distraction for all these tribulations, Dostoyevsky 
devoted himself to literary work, and wrote his great 
story, " Crime and Punishment," which established 
his reputation as a psychological analyst. In 1867 
he married again, and lived abroad for four years. 
He also, looking from the " beautiful distance " 
upon the pitiful side of Russian social life, wrote 
his two stories, "Idiot" and "Devils." After he 
came back he wanted to analyze the abnormal rela- 
tionship between the rising generation and the older 
writers ; and he founded a new journal, and wrote a 
novel entitled " Podrostok " (The Adult). The jour- 
nal was given up at the end of 1877 ; but Dostoyevsky, 
who had new novels in view, promised ultimately to 



43 2 APPENDIX. 

continue the journal at some future time. He died 
on the 9th of February, 1881 ; and on the day 
of his funeral the first number of the long-looked- 
for journal, which he did not live to see, was issued. 
All Petersburg escorted the beloved remains to the 
tomb ; tens of thousands of people were counted in 
the procession. Dostoyesky's faith in humanity is 
summed up in his own words : " I never could under- 
stand the reason why one-tenth part of our people 
should be cultured, and the other nine-tenths must 
serve as the material support of the minority and 
themselves remain in ignorance. I do not want to 
think or to live with any other belief than that our 
ninety millions of people (and those who shall be 
born after us) will all be some day cultured, human- 
ized, and happy. I know and I firmly believe that 
universal enlightenment will harm none of us. I also 
believe that the kingdom of thought and light is pos- 
sible of being realized in our Russia, even sooner than 
elsewhere maybe, because with us, even now, no one 
defends the idea of one part of the population being 
enlisted against the other, as is found everywhere in 
the civilized countries of Europe/ 



APPENDIX, 433 

Note to P. 203. 

The Banya (from " The Recollections of a Dead-House"). 

" In the whole city, there were only two public baths. 
The first, which was kept by a Hebrew, was numbered, 
with an entrance-fee of fifty kopeks for each number, 
and was designed for high-toned people. The other 
banya was pre-eminently common, old, filthy, small ; 
and to this banya our prisoners were going. It was 
cold and sunny. The men were already rejoicing 
because they were going to get out of prison, and 
have a glimpse of the city. Jests, laughter, did not 
cease during the walk. A whole squad of soldiers 
escorted us with loaded guns, to the wonder of the 
whole city. At the banya they immediately divided 
us into two detachments. The second had to wait in 
the cold ante-room while the first detachment soaped 
themselves, and this was necessary on account of the 
smallness of the banya ; but, notwithstanding this 
fact, the banya was so small, that it was hard to im- 
agine how our half could find accommodation in it. 
But Petrof did not leave me : he himself, without my 
asking him, hurried to help me, and even offered to 
wash me. Bakliushin, as well as Petrof, offered me 
his services. He was a prisoner from a special cell, 



434 APPENDIX. 

and was known among us as the pioneer, and him 
I remembered as the gayest and liveliest of the ares- 
tants, as indeed he was. We had already become 
somewhat well acquainted. Petrof helped me undress 
myself, because, as I was not used to it, it took me 
long ; and the dressing-room was cold, almost as cold 
as the street. By the way, it is very hard for a 
prisoner to undress if he has not had some practice. 
In the first place, it is necessary to know how to 
unfasten quickly the shin-protectors. 1 These shin- 
protectors are made of leather, about seven inches 
long ; and they are fastened to the underclothes di- 
rectly under the iron anklet which encircles the leg. 
A pair of shin-protectors are worth not less than sixty 
kopeks ; but, nevertheless, every prisoner gets himself 
a pair, at his own expense of course, because without 
them it is impossible to walk. The iron ring does not 
encircle the leg tightly, and it is easy to thrust a finger 
between the ring and the leg. Thus the iron strikes 
the leg, chafes it ; and a prisoner without shin-protec- 
tors would in a single day have bad wounds. But to 
take off the shin-protectors is not the hardest thing of 
all. It is much harder to learn to get off the clothes 
when one wears the rings {Jzandalui). This is the 
whole trick : Suppose you are taking off the drawers 

1 Podkandalniki. 



APPENDIX. 435 

from the left leg, it is necessary first to let the garment 
slip through between the leg and the ring. Afterwards 
you have to put it on again the same way. The same 
process must be gone through with when you put on 
clean clothes. For a newcomer it is even hard to 
guess how it is accomplished. The first one who ever 
taught us how to do it was the prisoner K6ryenef in 
Tobolsk, who had once been ataman of a gang of 
cut-throats, and had been fastened to a chain five years. 
But the prisoners get used to it, and do it without any 
difficulty. I gave several kopeks to Petrof to get soap 
and scrubbers. To be sure, the authorities furnished 
the prisoners with soap. Every one would get a lit- 
tle piece about the size of a two-kopek coin, and as 
thick as the slice of cheese served at evening lunch 
by middle- class people. Soap was sold here in the 
dressing-room, together with sbiten [a kind of mead], 
twists, and hot water. Every prisoner would get, 
according to the agreement made with the proprietor 
of the banya, a single pail of hot water. Whoever 
wanted to wash himself cleaner could get for a gros/i, 
or half kopek, an extra pail, which was handed into 
the banya itself through a window made for that pur- 
pose from the dressing-room. After helping me to 
undress, Petrof led me by the hand, observing that 
it was very hard for me to walk in the rings. " Pull 



43 ^ APPENDIX. 

them up a little higher over the calf," he added, sup- 
porting me as though he were my uncle {dyadka). 
"Be a little careful here, there is a door-sill." I even 
felt a little ashamed. I wanted to assure Petrof that 
I could get along by myself, but he would not have 
believed me. He treated me just like a young and 
incapable child, whom everybody was obliged to help. 
Petrof was far from being a servant, by no means was 
he a servant. Had I insulted him, he would have 
understood how to behave to me. I did not offer 
him any money for his sendees, and he did not ask 
for any. What, then, prompted him to take such care 
of me? 

" When we opened the door of the banya, I thought 
that we were going into Gehenna. Imagine a room 
about twelve feet long, and as wide, stuffed with prob- 
ably a hundred men at once, and, at the very least, 
surely eighty, because the prisoners were divided into 
two detachments, and the whole number of us who 
went to the banya were two hundred men ; the 
steam blinding our eyes, the sweat, the filth, such a 
crowd that there was no room to get a leg in. I was 
alarmed, and wanted to go back, but Petrof immedi- 
ately encouraged me. Somehow, with the greatest 
difficulty, we squeezed ourselves through to the 
benches, over the heads of those who were sitting on 



APPENDIX. 437 

the floor, asking them to bend down so that we could 
pass. But all the places on the benches were occu- 
pied. Petrof told me that it was necessary to buy a 
place, and immediately entered into transactions with 
a prisoner who had taken a place near the window. 
For a kopek the prisoner surrendered his place, im- 
mediately took the money from Petrof, who had it 
tight in his fist, having foreseen that it would be ne- 
cessary to bring it with him into the banya. The man 
threw himself under the bench, directly under my 
place, where it was dark, filthy, and where the slimy 
dampness was almost half a finger in thickness. But 
the places under the benches were also taken ; even 
there, the crowd clustered. On the whole floor, there 
was not a free place as large as the palm of the hand 
where the prisoners would not be sitting doubled up, 
washing themselves in their pails. Others stood up- 
right among these, and, holding their pails in their 
hands, washed themselves as best they could. The 
dirty water ran down directly on the shaven heads of 
those who sat beneath them. On the platform, and 
on all the steps leading to it, were men washing them- 
selves, bent down and doubled up. But precious little 
washing they got. Plebeians wash themselves very 
little with hot water and soap : they only steam them- 
selves tremendously, and then pour cold water over 



43 8 APPENDIX. 

them, and that's their whole bath. Fifty brooms or so 
on the platform were rising and falling in concert : 
they all broomed themselves into a state of intoxica- 
tion. Every instant steam was let in. It was not 
merely heat, it was hell let loose. It was all one up- 
roar and hullaballoo (gogotalo), with the rattling of a 
hundred chains dragging over the floor. . . . Some, 
trying to pass, entangled themselves with the chains of 
others, and they themselves bumped against the heads 
of those sitting below, and they tumbled over, and 
scolded, and dragged into the quarrel those whom 
they hit. The filth was streaming on every side. All 
were in an excited, and as it were intoxicated, state of 
mind. Shrieks and cries were heard. At the dressing- 
room window, where the water was handed through, 
there was a tumult, a pushing, even fighting. The hot 
water ordered was spilt on the heads of those sitting 
on the floor, before it reached its destination. Now 
and then, at the window or in the half-opened door, 
a soldier with mustachioed face would show himself, 
with gun in hand, ready to quell any disorder. The 
shaven heads and red, parboiled bodies of the pris- 
oners seemed uglier than ever. On their parboiled 
shoulders clearly appeared, oftentimes, the welts 
caused by the strokes and lashes which they may have 
received in days gone by ; so that now all these backs 



APPENDIX. 439 

seem to be freshly wounded. Horrid welts ! A chill 
went through my skin at seeing them. " Give us more 
steam ; " and the steam would spread in a thick hot 
cloud over the whole banya. From under the cloud 
of steam gleamed scarred backs, shaven heads, disfig- 
ured arms and legs. And as a fit climax Isai Fomitch 
(the Jew) would roar with all his throat, from the 
top of the platform. He steams himself into insanity, 
but it seems as if no heat could satisfy him. For a 
kopek he hires a washer (parilshchik) ; but at last it 
gets too warm for him, and he throws down the broom, 
and runs to pour cold water on him. Isai Fomitch 
does not give up hope, but hires a second, a third : he 
makes up his mind, on such occasions, not to grudge 
any expense, and he has as many as half a dozen 
washers. " You are tough, Isai Fomitch, you are a 
fine fellow," shout the prisoners from below. And 
Isai Fomitch himself feels that at this moment he 
stands above them all, and could thrust them all un- 
der his belt ; he is in a glory ; and with a sharp, crazy 
voice he shouts out his aria lya-Iya-Iya-lya, drowning 
all other voices. 1 The thought entered my mind, that, 

1 At the beginning of the chapter Isai Fomitch assures Dostoyevsky, 
" under oath, that this song and the same motive was sung by the six hundred 
thousand Hebrews, from small to great, when they crossed the Red Sea; and 
that every Hebrew has to sing this song at the moment of glory and victory 
over his enemies." 



44° APPENDIX. 

if we were ever to be all in hell, then it would look 
very much like this place. I could not refrain from 
imparting this thought to Petrof: he only looked 
around, but said no thing.' ' 






INDEX. 



Aksakof, 142, 144. 

Alexander II., Emperor, 148, 151, 152, 326. 

Alexander IIL, Emperor, 151, 152, 156. 

"Anna Karenina," 206, 218, 230, 232; analysis, 297-323; 

quoted, 304-305, 306-307, 309-322 ; meaning, 322. 
"Annals of a Sportsman," 121, 129, 158, 190, 394. 
Aristophanes, 70. 
Arria, 188. 

Balzac, 105. 

" Banya (bath), The," 203 ; quoted, 433-440. 

Bazarof, 145, 173, 174, 186, 388. 

Bielinsky, 120, 121 note, 424, 426. 

" Bulba." See " Taras Bulba." 

Censorship, The Russian, 122 note, 217, 398. 

"Childhood and Youth," 205, 217. 

" Confession." See " My Confession." 

Corneille, 13. 

" Cossacks, The " (" Kazaki "), 216, 229, 231 ; analysis, 239-267. 

" Commentary on the Gospels," Tolstoi's, 234. 

Daudet, Alphonse, 199 note. 

"Dead Souls," u, 28, 61, 159, 360, 396, 426; analysis, 86-115. 

Devil, The, in Gogol, 30. 

Dissenters, 181, 330, 337. 

Divorce, according to Tolstoi, 271, 299, 302. 

"Dmitri Rudin," 167, 168. 

Dniepr, 15-18, 36. 

441 



442 IXDEX. 

"Don Quixote," 133, 15S, 170. 

Dostoyevsky, 141, 202 note, 203, 204 note ; biography, 423-432 ; 
faith, 432. 

Edgeworth, Maria, 401, 402, 403. 

" Evenings at the Farm," 9, 10, 28, 29, 60. 

" Fathers and Sons," 130, 173, 3S8; quoted, 193-198. 

Fenelon, 70. 

Flaubert, 127, 134, 207, 209, 406. 

French novelists, 190, 191. 

German education, 172, 386. 

Goethe, 343 ; quoted by Turgenief, 137. 

Gogol, biography, 5-1 1, 339-362; professorship, 9, 10, 353, 
355-358 ; works enumerated, 29, 30, 346, 353 ; humor, 80, 
346; as a poet, 6, 13, 47, 114, 191 ; as a scholar, 343, 344, 
354; as a painter of women, 186; influence on Turgenief, 

394- 
Gontcharof, 430. 
Griboyedof, 238 note y 414. 
Grigorovitch, 425, 430. 

Hamlet, 126, 158, 170, 179. 
Hegel, 120, 168, 172, 386. 
Herzen, 428. 
Hugo, Victor, 209, 210. 

Iskander. See Herzen. 
Ivanitsky on Gogol, quoted, 356. 

James, Henry, quoted, 403 note, 

Karakozof, 151. 

Katkof, 145, 148, 149, 152, 174, 414. 
" Kazaki." See " The Cossacks." 
Khor and Kalinuitch, 121, 159. 
Kulzhinsky on Gogol, quoted, 343. 



ixdex. 443 

La Bruyere, 70. 

La Rochefoucauld, 220. 

Lermontof, 202 and note. 

"May Night, The," quoted, 21, 32. 
Marvellous, The, in Gogol, 30-34. 
Merimee, 4, 48, 192. 
Moliere, 11, 68, 70, 80. 
Muzhik. See Russian Peasantry. 
Murillo, comparison with Gogol, 31. 
"My Confession" (Tolstoi), 219-228. 

"My Religion" (Tolstoi'), 228, 322, 420; quoted, 278, 296; an- 
alysis, 324-338. 

Napoleon, Tolstoi's judgment of, 285. 

Nekrasof, 181, 202 note, 210 note, 391, 426* 

"Nest of Noblemen," 169. 

Nicholas, Emperor, 84, 113, 399, 426, 429. 

Niezhin, 5, 7, 342. 

Nihilism, 148, 173, 176, 179, 180, 329, 389. 

Occidentalism, Turgenief's, 120, 142, 387. 
"Old-time Proprietors," 51-58; quoted, 24. 

"Parasha," 120. 

Pathetic, The, in Turgenief, 199. 

Pisemsky, 167 note. 

Pletnef, 9, 385. 

Pobyedonovtsof, 152, 414. 

Poetry, Nature of, 13. 

Pogodin, 142. 

Polevoi, 339 ; quoted, 424, 429. 

Polonsky, 126, 136. 

Pushkin, 4, 6, 7, 9, 73, 112, 134, 202, 210, 238, 345, 385, 400, 

414; on Griboyedof's death, 238; judgment of Gogol, 58; 

as inspiration to Gogol, 345; festival, 135, 391. 

Raskolniks. See Dissenters. 

Realism, French and Russian, 25, 189, 193, 199, 286. 



444 INDEX. 

" Recollections of a Scorer " (Tolstoi), quoted, 235-237. 
"Recollections" (Reminiscences), Turgenief's, quoted, 120 

note, 122 note, 384, 3S8. 
Renan, funeral discourse on Turgenief, 408. 
Resurrection, The, according to Tolstoi', 278. 
Revizor, The, 7, 10, 61, 358, 426; analysis, 63-83. 
Rousseau, 70. 
Rudin. See Dmitri Rudin. 
Russian ideal, 182; language, 98, no, 192, 395, 414; mind, 

12; nature, 14, 18, 23, 114; nobility, 159, 164; peasantry, 

150,159,181,325. 

Sand, George, 127, 21 r. 

Sasuluitch, Viera, 171. 

Satirical, The, in Gogol, 7, 12, 60, 347. 

Shchedrin. See Soltuikof. 

Schiller, 212, 343; quoted by Turgenief, 154. 

Schopenhauer, 172, 228. 

Schuyler, Eugene, translation of " The Cossacks," 416. 

Serfage, 166, 326, 397. 

Shakspeare, 69, 126, 225. 

Skidelsky, quoted, 424. 

Slavophilism, 143, 144, 206. 

"Smoke," 175. 

Soltuikof, 204, 211. 

Swinburne, Turgenief's opinion of, 210. 

"Taras Bulba," 6, 10, 18, 29, 355; analysis, 36-49; Turgenief's 
judgment on, 50; quoted, 19, 23, 363-3S2. 

Tchernuishevsky, 145, 201, 210 note, 423. 

"Terrible Vengeance, A," quoted, 15-18. 

Tolstoi, Count Lyof N., biography, 215, 222-230, 236 note, 414- 
422; works enumerated, 216, 416, 417 ; talent, 218; mental 
and moral transformation, 222-230, 278; literary life, 
224, 231; marriage, 224, 421; mysticism, 234; character 
revealed in " The Cossacks," 256-258 ; in " War and 
Peace," 267, 275, 293, 295; in "Anna Karenina," 295, 421 ; 
his ideal of strength, 248; ideal of life, 227, 275, 299; as a 



index, 445 

historian, 283; as a non-combatant, 293, 299; as a prophet, 
219, 329; as a communist, 335; his creed, 332 ; appearance 
in 1862, 418; criticised by Turgenief, 205. 

Turgenief, Ivan, biography, 1 17-140, 383-40S ; works enumer- 
ated, 129-139; method of work, 130, 135, 183,407; prog- 
ress, 157; talent, 182,409; character, 139, 141 ; generosity, 
139 note, 155, 205; conversation, 140, 149, 405; as a politi- 
cal prophet, 153, 157; as a dramatist, 189; as a poet, 191, 
385, 399 note; as a critic on his epoch, 146, 150, 200 ; judg- 
ment on Alexander III., 152, 156; on Hugo, 209, 210; on 
George Sand, 212; Flaubert, 209; Zola, 208; Swinburne, 
210; Dickens, 407; Dostoyevsky, 203 ; Nekrasof, 201, 202; 
Gogol, 50; Soltuikof, 204; Tchernuishevsky, 201 ; Tolstoi, 
205, 231, 284; letters to Tolstoi", 127, 138; letter to Mr. 
King, 183; homesickness and love of Russia, 123, 127; 
personal appearance, 139, 393, 404; disease, 136. 

Turgenief, Nikolai, 383. 

Turner, C. E., on Gogol, quoted, 361. 

Ukraina, 10, 15, 23, 32. 

Viardot, 401, 406. 

" Vii," quoted, 30, 358. 

"Virgin Soil" {Nov), 131, 132, 176, 179, 187. 

Vogue, Count E. Melchior, on Turgenief, quoted, 390-400. 

"War and Peace,' , 206, 218, 230, 232, 233; analysis, 267-294. 
Woman in Gogol, 109, 187 ; in Turgenief, 186, 187 ; in Tolstoi, 
247, 288, 422. 

Zhukovsky, 4, 345. 
Zola, 135, 208, 211, 286. 



